Is Nick gay (or bisexual)?

[robfearon]

Is Nick Carraway, the narrator, gay (or bisexual)? In chapter 2, he goes down the elevator with Mr McKee:

'Come to lunch some day,' he suggested, as we groaned down the elevator.
'Where?'
'Anywhere.'
'Keep your hands off the lever,' snapped the elevator boy.
'I beg your pardon,' said Mr McKee with dignity, 'I didn't know I was touching it.'
'All right,' I agreed, 'I'll be glad to.'
...I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.
'Beauty and the Beast...Loneliness...Old Grocery Horse...Brook'n Bridge...'
Then I was lying half asleep in the lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning Tribune, and waiting for the four o'clock train.

Is that small passage enough to make a conclusion? Perhaps what Nick is really attracted to in Jordan Baker is her masculinity - she's described as being quite butch. What do you guys think?

Robert

[Dark_Link1]

Well, after reading the great gatsby the paragraph mentioned above is very ambiguous and could mean a variety of different things. However i percieved it as you did, i thought that he went to bed with the guy.

[optimisticnad]

sorry, not read that book. and your probably wondering why I am posting here...cos no one else seems to. so hi. and using my lack of analytical skills i would say yes, lever: phallic symbol? use of the word groaned, syntax structure: we groaned, not elevator groaned etc.

[djmyerhmgirl]

lol butch is an interesting way to put it!! In my mind, Jordan had a slim boyish figure. Definitely not butch!!
Maybe the scene you quoted was the result of Mr Fitzgerald being more drunk than usual.

[Plum White]

I always assumed Nick to be somewhat bisexual- Jordan is referred to as 'boyish' at one point, i think, and Nick describes Gatsby as having 'something gorgeous about him'. Plus that scene with the elevator which i never actually noticed before.

[-emily-]

Nick is not gay. He has been engaged before (to a woman) back in the mid-west and was attracted to Jordan throughtout the novel who was not butch but is refered to as a very attractive woman. They kiss and Nick only doesn't want to be with her at the end of the novel because of her attitude towards the accident involving Gatsby and Daisy and resulting in Myrtle's death.

[eilidhx]

Nick Carroway is not gay. Before he arrived at the Eggs he was engaged to a woman who he did not marry only because "he would not be gossiped into it" Furthermore, Nick only breaks up with Jordan after her insensitivity about the matter of Myrtle's death and her the fact that she represents so many of the negative issues of the hedonistic society she lives in, for example immorality. Furthermore, Nick kisses Jordan and is immediately attracted to her. This does not suggest that Nick is gay and if he was F.Scott.Fitzgerald would make more clear, as opposed to describing it through Nick's drunken state.

[baldy1]

Nick is not gay as he had strong feelings for Jordan even though she thinks he is quite shallow.

[tait]

I agree fully with Eilidh and Emily, well said ladies. xx

[dj Winston]

I agree with Taita xxxxxxx

[livelaughlove]

Yup, I don't think Nick is gay either, though there are some pretty sketchy parts that could certainly point to it. But I think that being that was one of the two times Nick was ever drunk, he just could not hold his liquor-- my Lit teacher also said that an elevator boy would not snap at a gentleman like that "Get your hand off the lever" unless they had not been behaving properly (which was most likely the case)

[darkmage2003]

Yes, Nick was engaged before and to a woman. You forget, this book is set in the 1920s, an era with a culture that is completely different from ours in most every way.

[Redzeppelin]

The ambiguity of the end of the chapter quoted is due largely to Nick's blurry recollection of the event (if you remember, he was quite drunk). It would be silly for Fitzgerald to have his drunk, first person narrator narrate in a perfectly coherent style. As the chapter winds down, the recollection becomes more fragmented to mirror Nick's patchy memory of the evening.

[alias3r]

sorry, not read that book. and your probably wondering why I am posting here...cos no one else seems to. so hi. and using my lack of analytical skills i would say yes, lever: phallic symbol? use of the word groaned, syntax structure: we groaned, not elevator groaned etc.

ya but i dont think he is gay. I think the author meant to say that "the elevator groaned" but he has a different way of describing things. I heard about it in my AP English class or somethign. Something about how F. Scott Fitzgerald knows what he is talking about but forgets to make it so that the readers know what he is talking about.

[obesechicken13]

'Keep your hands off the lever,' snapped the elevator boy.


'I beg your pardon,' said Mr McKee with dignity, 'I didn't know I was touching it.'
Robert

NIck is a pedifile! why would Fitzgerald write this if he didn't want to imply at least wavy orientation. The drunken argument doesn't work, Fitzgerald doesn't write drunk. He does everything else drunk, just not writing. The fact that Nick has been drinking only makes this passage even worse.

This allows me to formulate the conclusion that Nick is meant to like , Besides it says he loses interest with the lady from his past over a summer.