Nick's narrative

Here are some basic points about the narrative style and the way characters are developed:

• The role of Nick as the narrator is fundamental to the narrative style of the story.  Gatsby’s character is ‘filtered’ through Nick Carraway’s narration.
• However, Nick himself, becomes a figure whom we must interpret.  As Nick tells us the story and we piece together our interpretation of Gatsby, we are also inevitably adjusting our sense of who the man is telling Gatsby’s story.
• Nick is able to comment on, and pass judgement on the events around him with the involved immediacy of a first-person voice.

• Narrating the story from Nick’s perspective could have resulted in a monotonous voice.  This is avoided by having Nick recreate dramatic exchanges as dialogue; he recreates the voices of the characters he encounters.
• Rather than telling the story in terms of Nick’s personal musings, Fitzgerald ensures that his narrator produces dramatic reconstructions in a series of linked scenes; this is called the scenic method.
• Whilst the scenes are relatively self-contained, there is elaborate cross-reference between the scenes.
• Invariably, Nick lets the dialogue stand without comment, leaving it to the readers to weigh the significance of what is said.

• Fitzgerald was writing at a time when cinema was becoming popular and this seems to have had an influence on the structure of his novel.  There are lots of ‘cuts’ between scenes, which are symptomatic of a cinematic style.
• Descriptions often alternate between a type of ‘wide-angle’ panoramic shot (Gatsby’s parties) and close-up.

• It is difficult, in this novel, to regard objects as objects pure and simple.  There are a variety of different objects that takes on a significance above and beyond the literal; the car, for example, represents more than a vehicle for physical mobility.
• Fitzgerald often uses familiar associations of symbols in an ironic way; the colour green is not used to represent traditional associations such as fertility, growth and lushness.  Instead, the electric green light at the end of the Buchanan’s implies jealousy and envy (Gatsby’s envy of Tom’s marriage to Daisy).

·         Words and phrases recur regularly but the situation in which they are used changes their meanings.  For example, the familiar associations of the colour white are modified as the words appear in different contexts.  White is applied to the ‘palaces’ of the wealthy, to the ‘ashen dust’ that coats Wilson’s clothes and to Daisy’s ‘white’ girlhood.  Clearly, images of ‘whiteness’ have different meanings in these different situations.

·         Other recurring references include those to flowers, clothing, sight & vision, accidents and carelessness.

• Characters are not presented in an objective, definitive way.  Fitzgerald is interested in the different ways in which characters perceive other characters.  Carraway’s viewpoint dominates the novel but we are not allowed to forget that other interpretations are possible.
• Buchanan’s view of Gatsby and Henry C Gatz’s view of his son show how fundamentally different views of a single individual may be.
• Nick is engaged in a process of interpreting characters and their motivation but his interpretations are, in themselves, difficult to assess.  For example, his opinions on Gatsby change from one sentence to the next.
• Characterisation is developed through nuance, suggestion and hints.