Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Is Nick Carraway an honest and non-judgemental narrator?400-500 words

No one is completely non-judgmental, not even in literature.  While Nick tells us, in the opening of the book, that because his father once told him to remember that he's had advantages in life others haven't had, he tends to reserve judgment, that doesn't mean he never passes judgment on a person - he just doesn't make immediate evaluations that remain unchanged.  In fact, it's only one paragraph later, that Nick reveals that he didn't care much for Gatsby at first.  He says that Gatsby represented everything that Nick scorned, but that Gatsby turned out to be an OK guy, in fact, he turned out to be a guy that Nick admired.  Nick's last words to Jay Gatsby, in chapter 8, were, "They are a rotten crowd.  You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."  What makes Nick a valuable narrator though and what his point is in the opening of the story, is that Nick doesn't make snap judgments on people for the most part.  Nick tends to be open to people and he judges them finally by their behaviors and their attitudes revealed to him over time.  After having spent an evening with the Buchanans in the first chapter, we are told that he left feeling a little disgusted.  His disgust dealt with the lack of morality he witnessed, namely, Tom's affair with Myrtle and the fact that Daisy was obviously aware of it and did nothing about it.  His opinion didn't stop him from giving the Buchanans opportunities to change that opinion.  Just because he didn't agree with their moral choices, he didn't shun them.  This all points toward his lack of being a judgmental person and narrator.  His value as a narrator is that he is fairly honest in telling us, the reader, what is happening and letting us form our own judgments. We can trust him because he doesn't insert a great deal of opinion.

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