Making Nick the narrator is an interesting decision on Fitzgerald's part. If he wanted a truly objective narrator, he could have easily written the novel in third person omniscient point of view, with a narrator who was not involved in the story at all. Instead, he uses the character Nick. For all of Nick's insisting in the first chapter that he is so nonjudgmental and tolerant, he wouldn't exist at all in the story if he were completely objective.
So what purpose does he serve, if not to relate the story objectively as it happens? There are a few answers to this. For one, Nick works as a reader surrogate, the everyman coming from the country to the glitzy life of New York and taking the reader along for the ride. As Nick experiences this new life, readers are introduced to it as well, through his eyes.
On a related note, Nick as a character struggles with this new life of Jazz Age parties and superficiality. He undergoes an internal conflict throughout the book as he works out whether the glamorous, fast-paced life of New York is worth the damage it does to people and relationships. This is symbolized through his relationship with Jordan Baker, whose liveliness attracts him at first, until her carelessness and dishonesty turn him off of her.
Finally, Nick plays a role in doing exactly what he says he doesn't do: providing judgement. As he looks over Gatsby's unattended funeral, he contemplates the moral emptiness of free-wheeling East Coast life and the futility of the American Dream. At the end of the novel, Nick acts as a vehicle to transport Fitzgerald's themes to the reader.
No comments:
Post a Comment