The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway
Within the first lines that begin ‘The great Gatsby’ Fitzgerald establishes to the reader that the main character, Nick Carraway, is a reliable narrator using the technique of flashbacks. The first line from The great Gatsby says “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice….. “Whenever you feel like criticising anyone,”... “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”...... in consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements,” The foundation of a reliable and unbiased narrator allows Fitzgerald to fully explore the complexities of the roaring 20’s and the glamour and hedonism that defined the era, and all the corruption and destruction that came with it. Despite his midwestern and conservative upbringing, Nick arrives in New York to chase the fortune associated with the developing stock market. The story unfolds through the interactions Nick has with his vain and wealthy cousin Daisy Buchanan, her friend Jordan Baker, her husband Tom, and his neighbour Jay Gatsby. While in New York, Nick sees the excess and immoral behaviours spark tragedy, and eventually, his own return to the midwest. We can see the lack of ethics already in the first chapter, where Fitzgerald uses descriptive language to show the excess within Daisy and Tom’s home, he writes “... a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by french windows at the end. … gleaming white against the fresh grass outside….blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.” The description of their house implies an almost otherworldly and ethereal picture, with the use of the adjectives “rosy-coloured”, “fragily bound”, and “gleaming white” painting a picture of purity and excellent that is maintained and upheld by the Buchanans even though their actual lives are nothing of the sort, with both people eventually falling in to affairs. This can be seen as Fitzgerald's way of criticising the characters of Daisy, Tom and everyone who comes from old money. Their class as seen from the luxuries they can afford, and their transactional marriage as seen from how they both commit adultery. This is a critique of the mentality at the time, where people chase after the capitalist "American dream" and the dream of becoming rich through their own hard work, where people are greedy in the way they approach the glamour, and that decision leads to the decay of their inter-personal relationships in the end. Showing the ugly underbelly of the American dream, and how the working class suffer in order to please the elite.