The Great Gatsby

4 Pages 1089 Words

Does Fitzgerald portray Gatsby as the one who is ‘Great’ or is Nick Carraway the true hero of the novel?

Nick Carraway provides the eyes and ears with which Fitzgerald shows us a period ‘described as a corrupt, amoral and violent time, in which loneliness, frustration and lost spiritual values are typical.’ Within this bleakness Fitzgerald has chosen to write about Jay Gatsby, a man who symbolizes the American Dream, who has ‘an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I (Nick) have never found in any other person.’ Nick lives in this bleakness too but Fitzgerald brings him in closer to it, all the while showing us a hero of the time. Despite the flaws shown, I believe Fitzgerald still wants us to view Gatsby as a hero. Nick aspires to be a hero but he cannot due to the reality of his character and despite his admiration for the finer qualities in man, he lacks the fervor to obtain these himself.

One critic claimed: “ Without the gloss given to him the story of Gatsby is merely that of a bootlegger killed by a garage owner.” This is true. Gatsby is a bootlegger, a mysterious figure and newly rich. His fortune unlike that of the Buchanans, did not come from family, he wasn’t born into it. It came from criminal dealings, the full details of which are kept hidden from us, the readers. The first time Gatsby is met in person he has to excuse himself ‘almost at that moment’ due to the ‘phone call’ from Chicago. Meyer Wolfsheim ‘the man who fixed the Worlds Series back in 1919’ is the next clue to the life of Gatsby and the ‘friends’ he keeps. The novel is punctuated with ominous phone calls and vicious rumours such as “ Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once,” and “he was aGerman spy during the war.” All of these lead the reader to believe Gatsby is involved in criminal activities. The full details are always kept hidden however as Fitzgerald doesn’t wish u...