The Problematic point of view of the I-narrator in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby'

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1 (A), Southern Connecticut State University (English Department), course: American Literature of the Early 1900s, language: English, abstract: Nick Carraway is one of the major characters of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby. He is a young man from Minneapolis/ St. Paul who graduated from Yale University and served his country in the First World War. Carraway was raised in a small town in the Midwest. He finds his hometown to be stifling and decides to move to the East Coast in the early 1920s to learn the bond business. He hopes to find a sense of freedom and identity in New York. Carraway lives next door to the wealthy Jay Gatsby in a district of Long Island called West Egg. However, Nick Carraway is not only a character taking part in the story, he is also the I-narrator that the author uses to recount his story. The Great Gatsby is told entirely through Nick Carraway's eyes; his thoughts and perceptions color and shape the story. The Great Gatsby actually functions as a personal memoir of Carraway's experiences with his mysterious neighbor Jay Gatsby in the summer of 1922. The story becomes more realistic by means of using an first-person-narrator. Because Nick Carraway is experiencing events and telling the reader about them in his own words, the plot becomes more believable. Rather than imposing himself between the reader and the action, a first-person- narrator can bring the reader closer to the action by forcing him to experience the events as though he was the narrator himself. The I of the narrator becomes the I of the reader who is, like Carraway, left wondering who Gatsby is, why he gives these huge parties and what his background and past may be. The reader might identify more with the story than it is the case when an omniscient third-person narrator is used. The reader cares about Gatsby because the narrator does; he wants to find out more about Gatsby because the narrator does; he is angry that no one comes to Gatsby's funeral because the narrator is... Carraway's position as the narrator, placed between the reader and the narration, gives him the only authoritative role of interpretation. Therefore the narrator's point of view and his credibility should be examined. Nick Carraway seems to be the perfect choice to narrate the novel. He is the cousin of Daisy Buchanan, he was in the same senior society as Tom Buchanan at Yale, and he rented a house right next to Jay Gatsby. He knows all the characters well enough to be present at the crucial scenes in the novel. [...]