The Great Gatsby -- An Analysis Part 1

It's 1922. Four years after WWI. The story of Jay Gatsby begins with the introduction of the fictive narrator, Nick Carraway. And he opens the story by telling us about a life-lesson that his father advised him while he was still "younger and more vulnerable." It's an advice on criticising others and his father cautions him that "...all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had..." Beginning a story with a moral like this sounds like a strange prefererence. It could have scared people off while seducing others into the story -- a bigger portion, by the way, given that in the years following the war, having already been disappointed with the results of the war, that they had initially thought could have saved and reestablished the Western Civilization, people were close to losing their hope and were running after a moral that could have given them a gleam of optimism for their future.

Throughout the novel, I have always been more interested in Nick and tried to follow his footsteps, not Gatsby's. To me, Nick is a more intriguing and genuine caharacter than Gatsby. Nick looks like to be made of bone and flesh while Gatsby is hardly anything but a superficiality; a culmination of shallow feelings. He feels like plastic, just like a baby doll which is only meant to spend some good time with.

Nick is a war veteran. He's one proud member of that Lost Generation, which is such a poetic attribution. Not his being a member of this group, but his name forced me, during my reading of the novel, to compare him with Hemingway's Nick for he has some striking common characteristics with Fitzgerald's Nick. I don't know if Fitzgerald employed this same personality in his other works as an embodiment of the generation of WWI, but in this story, Nick can't ever claim the position that Hemingway's Nick attains in his reality and universality. Fitzgerald's Nick thinks, too, about the problems of the age; however, he's not as expressive as Hemingway's Nick. Even one single story of Hemingway, say Big Two Hearted River, introduces us a young man who is war-torn, yet very expressive through his silence and minute actions.

Fitzgerald and Hemingway were close friends and I would like to know who first thought of a character like Nick and who was the follower. In ay case, the result is for long clear to me.

In the beginning, Gatsby sounds like an opposite of Nick in character and mood. That's why Nick says, "Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn..." Like Hemingway's Nick's smooth adaptation to the nature, Nick in the Great Gatsby adapts himself into the life of a metropolis. Having told a stranger the way he "was lonely no longer." Instead he feels to be part of the great machine, a functioning cogwheel in the system, "...a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler." Myself being a new comer in this country, I was deeply impressed by his adaptability and elasticity.

How was Nick's stance toward Gatsby, which was distant and scornful at first, developped into an intimate friendship? I don't think the impulse for this came from Nick. He was mostly a distant observer. An observer of Gatsby's wealth; of his home, garden and the parties he has given where the super rich class of New York attend. Nick's inclusion into this life is a passive one. Still, he is an acute observer. He watches the men and women who flock Gatsby's sumptuous parties where all kinds of extravaganza are allowed: Industrialists, tobacco importers, senators, people from the entertainment sector. The makers and performers of the American capitalism. Nick watches them, in the beginning, as an outsider, memorizing their names and figuring out their personalities that make them weaker (human) and meanner (devil).

Gatsby has a strange personality. He knows very well that to survive and climb the ladders of prosperity, you need to make good acquaintances. In his world, you are defined not by your own qualities, but by the people whom you know and who endorse you. Mr. Wolshaim, Gatsby'y closest friend and mentor, emphasises on this over and over, implying that you are actually nothing in this capital of the capitalist America but what your "gonnegtions" are.

Mr. Wolshaim is the man who has fixed 1919 World Series. He's a gambler and a cunning imposter. Fitzgerald often makes such generalizations. Tom Buchanan's racist remarks have a direct connection with his skin color and ethnicity just as Mr. Wolshaim's sneaky manipulations imply that this also has something to do with his ethnicity.

All in all, Gatsby's world is the world of the people who controls the money, the power and the very establishments of the flourishing American capitalism, which has found itself a strong resonance in the streets of New York soon after WWI.

Regarding the first part of the book, all my attention and symphaty go to Nick. Because among all the persons who populate the novel, if he ever loved, only his would be a genuine love.