Reliability of Nick Carraway as the narrator
Nadine Farid IB 15/04/2015
Reliability of Nick Carraway as the narrator of S. Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby”:
The story is about Nick’s perception of, opinions on, and thoughts about other characters and events.
What makes a narrator unreliable with a compromised point of view?
Can’t be trusted because they: 1. Lie 2.Make mistakes 3. Speaks with bias 4. Intoxicated/ hallucinations/ memory distortion 5.Are an accomplice to another character’s lies 6.Have prejudice about race, class or gender 7.Have low intelligence/are uneducated 8. A secondary source (lacking information)
Nick is unreliable because:
The beginning: Nick describes how he deals with the bores at his college by saying that he “frequently … feigned sleep, preoccupations or a hostile levity.” (5) Pretending to be sleeping, busy or irritated to avoid them is a dishonest act on Nick’s part. => Dishonest and intolerant. When Nick is referring to other young men he says: “the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred with obvious suppressions.” (6).This hints, that Nick’s story, as he is a young man himself, is plagiaristic, meaning borrowed from other characters and isn’t first-hand information. “Marred with obvious suppressions”, suggests that he isn’t telling the whole truth. =>Dishonest/Liar
False claims about himself/family: Although Nick claims that his family, “have been prominent, well-to-do people in the middle-western town for three generations.” (7), he then reveals that his father can only support him for 1 year and he dismisses rumors about his engagement by claiming that he’s too poor to be getting married. He also claims he’s from Scottish nobility, yet his grandfather’s brother left his country and immigrated to America and sent a substitute to war (not noble or patriotic).
Nick says about himself: “I am one of the few
Reliability of Nick Carraway as the narrator of S. Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby”:
The story is about Nick’s perception of, opinions on, and thoughts about other characters and events.
What makes a narrator unreliable with a compromised point of view?
Can’t be trusted because they: 1. Lie 2.Make mistakes 3. Speaks with bias 4. Intoxicated/ hallucinations/ memory distortion 5.Are an accomplice to another character’s lies 6.Have prejudice about race, class or gender 7.Have low intelligence/are uneducated 8. A secondary source (lacking information)
Nick is unreliable because:
The beginning: Nick describes how he deals with the bores at his college by saying that he “frequently … feigned sleep, preoccupations or a hostile levity.” (5) Pretending to be sleeping, busy or irritated to avoid them is a dishonest act on Nick’s part. => Dishonest and intolerant. When Nick is referring to other young men he says: “the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred with obvious suppressions.” (6).This hints, that Nick’s story, as he is a young man himself, is plagiaristic, meaning borrowed from other characters and isn’t first-hand information. “Marred with obvious suppressions”, suggests that he isn’t telling the whole truth. =>Dishonest/Liar
False claims about himself/family: Although Nick claims that his family, “have been prominent, well-to-do people in the middle-western town for three generations.” (7), he then reveals that his father can only support him for 1 year and he dismisses rumors about his engagement by claiming that he’s too poor to be getting married. He also claims he’s from Scottish nobility, yet his grandfather’s brother left his country and immigrated to America and sent a substitute to war (not noble or patriotic).
Nick says about himself: “I am one of the few