Who Is Nick Carraway Selfish In The Great Gatsby

When one literally lives in the shadow of someone Great, it is natural to begin to idolize them. Nick Carraway spent his days gazing at the seemingly fabulous life of his neighbor, and became fast friends with him, the elusive Jay Gatsby. However, friendship was not enough for Nick’s incredibly unstable personality. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway became obsessed with Gatsby to the point of losing himself in the midst of his subconscious effort to become Great, like the Gatsby.
First, Nick viewed Gatsby as his hero. He realized that “Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have unaffected scorn” (Fitzgerald 2), was an unlikely role-model, but nevertheless, continued to look up to him. This hero complex caused …show more content…
He blindly believed most things Gatsby told him without a second thought. “For a moment I suspected that he was pulling my leg, but a glance at him convinced me otherwise” (Fitzgerald 65). Nick told of Gatsby’s understanding smile, and honored it as a form of confirmation (Fitzgerald 48). Nick somehow trusted Gatsby not to lie to him, despite Gatsby's entire life being a lie. Compromising his own honest personality, Nick wove himself deeper into these corrupt peoples’ lives. Following Daisy’s rejection of Gatsby, Nick risked his job in order to keep Gatsby company all night and half of the next day. Hearing of Nick’s poor financial situation throughout the story (Fitzgerald 5), he ought to have been more focused on retaining his job than this one-sided …show more content…
Turning away from Daisy’s side and fully backing Gatsby, was the turning point of Nick’s embodiment of Gatsby. Towards the end of the story, Nick realizes that “a new point of view occurred to me” (Fitzgerald 144). It was Gatsby’s, and though it did not present itself to him until the end of the story, he has subconsciously been on Gatsby's side for far longer. “In many ways, Nick is an unreliable narrator” (Edwards). Nick likely embellished the story to seem as though he was more on Gatsby's side when, in reality, he was not. Yet, it is easy to understand, as Nick remained obsessed with impressing Gatsby, even two years after his death. In the switch from Daisy’s to Gatsby's side, a single encounter with Gatsby summed up Nick’s new feelings. Nick told Gatsby “‘They're a rotten crowd… You're worth the whole bunch put together’” (Fitzgerald 154). In this one sentence, Nick sold out all his other friends to claim Gatsby as his only friend. He received the reassurance he was hoping for when Gatsby's “face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we'd been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time” (Fitzgerald 154). This was the pinnacle of Nick's summer; though all of his friends’ lives were jumbled, Nick’s goal to be accepted by Gatsby had been reached, and that was all that mattered to Nick. Even when Nick found himself “on Gatsby's side, and alone” (Fitzgerald 164), he was proud to say that he was the