Gatsby January 14

The book opens with Nick’s explanation that he refrains from judging people: “In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores” (1). Much like the people that call upon Nick to hear their “abortive sorrows and short-winded elations” (2), we, as Nick’s audience, trust his position of neutrality to provide us with only the facts of actual events, untainted by personal prejudice. As far as I can see, the text seems to back up this claim. Nick meets men and women of both low status and high and regards all of them basically the same. When Nick first visits Tom and Daisy, he is presented with unsettling information that Tom is having an affair. Nick responds “blankly”. He doesn’t condemn Tom as being in the right or the wrong. He simply lets Tom exist. Nick exhibits the same neutrality as he visits with Tom, Myrtle and company. Even when Tom’s affair is openly gossiped about, Nick only responds with unbiased questions. He presents the events as they occurred without furious passion, crimson embarrassment or smug approval. At one point, in a drunken haze of memory, Nick recounts how Tom, in a “short deft movement”, broke Myrtle’s nose because she refused to refrain from using Daisy’s name. He doesn’t litter his report with declarations of provocation or immaturity. The account is crisp and simple: “bloody towels upon the bathroom floor”, “the despairing figure on the couch, bleeding fluently”, “a long broken wail of pain” (37) and then he leaves. Another simple example of Nick’s restraint is when he finds Jordan to be “incurably dishonest” (58). He shrugs it off, telling his audience, “It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot” (58). Nick leaves room for both his companions and his audience to decide what is morally right. His claim is solid. Nick makes for a very accomplished narrator. He allows his fellow characters to speak for themselves, providing his readers the freedom to paint the novel’s pallet as they see fit.