Nick Carraway is an important character in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby. Throughout the book, Nick struggles to understand the world around him and the people in it. Why are some people so careless while other people are so cautious? Why do people wait around for things to happen instead of going out and making them happen? And most of all, with all the people in the world, how can one still feel so lonely?It’s not hard to pick up on Nick’s detachment, “I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others too- poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner- young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life. ” The author’s portrayal on loneliness is pretty universal, yet inexplicably romantic, when he describes the “poor young clerks. Dining alone in public is a motif for solitude because nearly everyone uses eating, usually dinner, as a reason to get out and be sociable or intimate.
He also mentions the “young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life. ” Dusk is a very profound time of day. It’s subtle and has an inconspicuous sophistication to it, which gives it some kind of unique character, so to misuse it would be a lost opportunity. Nick is very sentimental and seems to be trapped in the labyrinth of his own mind.He tries to cope with his solitude by being independent, “I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair.
Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life,” but he gets carried away by conversation.Nick wants to embrace the world around him and make the most out of life, but he’s tied down by his curiosity for people. As much as he wants to escape the pressure of social expectations, he’s far too compelled by human interaction and observing the behaviors and habits of everyone around him.
He appears to be overwhelmed by Gatsby’s big parties and despite the fact that he knows Gatsby’s “friends” are one-sided and don’t even care about their host, he still wants to be included in the blasphemy.This is just one of many examples to describe Nick’s inconsistent opinions and contradictions toward himself. As Gatsby hopelessly pines for Nick’s cousin, Daisy, Nick really empathizes with him because they are both alone and surrounded by people at the same time. Nick spends some time thinking about Gatsby and mysteries of the unknown world, “And as I sat there, brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out Daisy’s light at the end of his dock.He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it. But what he did not know was that it was already behind him, somewhere in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled under the night.
” Although Nick and Gatsby are similarly lonesome, Nick sees the unavoidable truth that Gatsby is too blind to notice: loneliness is everlasting.He isn’t convinced that true love exists when he thinks about painful memories from his past, and when he sees how Gatsby lights up just by being able to see Daisy’s house beyond the dock, he knows that Gatsby’s dream will inevitably be short-lived, but all Gatsby can think about is his past with Daisy. He’s convinced that the past can be repeated and he’ll eventually win Daisy back, leaving Nick to be the powerless bystander, searching for a forbidden love of his own. Throughout the book, Nick searches for someone who is like him and takes the time to try to understand people.He finds this trait in Gatsby and feels as if he were a holy figure in a seemingly corrupt and sinister world, “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.
He was a son of God- a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that- and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end. Although thoughtless party-goers judged and misunderstood Gatsby, Nick recognized that you do have to, at some point, be who you want to be, not who everyone else wants you to be; and that’s just what Gatsby did.He created an image he could be proud to convey for the rest of his life.
He never evaluated people or criticized anyone and kept mostly to himself. In a way, it seems like Nick liked and disliked Gatsby for the same reason: he wanted to be him. When Nick was younger his father told him, “Whenever you feel like riticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had,” but as much as he tries to discipline himself into doing that, he can’t help but notice little things about people, and he sees that it’s a natural trait of Gatsby’s to not be judgmental. In the end, loneliness is experienced by everyone. Some people are constantly longing for the past to return, others are longing for a new future to begin and sometimes you just need to stop worrying about everything and live, because life’s not always as long as you think it will be.
