The Struggle to be Honest in a Corrupt World : Narration and Relations in The Great Gatsby

Although many attempts have been made on determining the trustworthiness of the narrator in The Great Gatsby, I would like to argue that there is more to say on that matter. Critics like Gary Scrimegeour and Colin Cass claim that the narrator Nick Carraway is hypocrisy embodied. They argue that his statements do not coincide with his actions, and that the author Fitzgerald was clumsy and made Nick a hypocrite by mistake. On the contrary, I would like to argue that Fitzgerald very much knew what he was doing when he portrayed the character of Nick. In Nick, Fitzgerald succeeds to depict a person with human faults but his heart in the right place, who struggles to be honest in a corrupt world. His hypocrisy in the narrative should rather be viewed as turning points in his moral growth, as he seeks to understand the new ways of the west. By investigating Nick’s different relationships in the novel and analysing them one by one, I collect proof to strengthen my claim. Beginning with the smaller characters of Daisy, Tom, and Jordan, I then continue to analyse Gatsby and finally the relationship between Nick and the reader. One of my main points in this essay is that the paths of Nick and Gatsby are closely linked and that Nick shadows much of what Gatsby does. Therefore Nick’s statement about Gatsby, “[Gatsby] believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself” (53) is essential in understanding Nick’s actions. Nick thinks he was given the promise of the impossible and therefore took a leap at life, although everything he had ever known was against it. When Nick eventually realizes that Gatsby’s dream would fail, he still shows tribute to the man whom this narrative is ultimately written for, so the sacrifice for the dead Gatsby must be seen as an action of an honest man. Keywords: Narration, honesty, dishonesty, reliability, morality, moral journey, ambivalence, moral growt