Nick Carraway
Despite the title, Nick Carraway is the first character we meet, and appropriately his role in The Great Gatsby is crucial; without him the story would lack balance and insight. The first chapter is primarily dedicated to establishing his personality and position in the book, then moving on to Tom and Daisy. Nick is our guide in The Great Gatsby; he relates the story as he has seen it and from what others have told him. He strives at all times to be objective and to make balanced comments just as he said in the beginning of the book, ^I^m inclined to reserve all judgements.^ The role of Nick Carraway is so important to the book that the character of Jay Gatsby could not exist. His objectivity is reinforced throughout to us by his scorn of Gatsby which becomes known to the reader when he says he, ^represented everything for which I have unaffected scorn.^ He registers contempt for much of what Gatsby stands for; the falseness, the criminality, but he still likes him. His ability to laugh at Gatsby and his false beliefs shows he^s neither charmed not wholly disgusted by Gatsby. Nick^s amusingly contemptuous remarks show his sense of humor, and although he is straight-laced, he does not bore the reader. Fitzgerald tells the audience of his age, thirty, which makes the them take his opinions seriously, as he is not some immature man. Nick is introduced directly, but Gatsby remains a distant and unknown character for a good while. The establishment of Nick^s reflective, tolerant personality is essential, as are his limitations, so we just don^t dismiss him as a character speaking the words and feelings of the author. The fact that he disapproves of Gatsby so early on helps us to go along with his judgements when he tells us of Gatsby and unfolds the story. Nick is unlike the other characters of the book; he is not one of the ^careless people.^ He has a conscience, he is not selfish, and he has decency that is well demonstrated in his efforts...
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