I still don’t understand how so many of adaptations of Gatsby got Nick So Wrong. What I can condense it down to, however, in many senses, is that Nick is viewed as a lens to this world, a voice to the story, instead of a character in it. directors and writers misplace the audiences naivety to the likes of Gatsby and the Buchanan’s and the environment and instead project it on to Nick.
he is treated as our entry-way into this world, like a baby with new eyes, as opposed to someone who is Amongst everything, yet outside it.
Within and without.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but Nick is passive, and he is cynical, but he isn’t naive and he knows that by listening and observing and paying attention that he’ll learn far more than the people around him, one of those reasons he feels he can differentiate himself from the Buchanan’s because they’re so self-absorbed where he feels he isn’t.
His quietness, and his unwillingness to be an active participant in so many things isn’t quite calculated so much as observant because he doesn’t think of himself as One Of Them. The only context he considers himself the ‘type’ of person that the Buchanan’s or Gatsby is, is in relation to them being of the west, and therefore allegedly unable to adapt to eastern life.
His quietness isn’t ignorance, it’s not naivety. It’s an awareness, a cynicism, an observation, the view of one who believes themself to be on the outside and therefore impartial and able to pass judgement.
I think that’s what a lot of adaptions miss, instead just using him as the viewers eyes, essentially
