The Monumental Change of Nick Carraway
Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is portrayed as an honest man, who follows good morals. His morals were taught to him by his father when he was young, these morals include things, like hard work, perseverance, and to be a fair judge of character, he follows these morals even up to this point in his life. However throughout the first four chapters of the book we see Nick slowly start to change his ways. The man who was once not interested in gossip or parties, finds himself doing just the opposite.
One of the first and most important things we learn about Nick is his ability to not judge people. Nick is always looking for the good in people, even if he has heard the opposite. This all changes though when he meets Jay Gatsby. When Nick first meets Gatsby he can’t help, but to judge him, “When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn” (Fitzgerald 2 ). This quote by Nick, shows the first of many subtle changes in Nick. Nick knows better than to judge people, but with Gatsby he can’t help it. His disgust with Gatsby is too strong. This doesn’t seem like a big change, since it is so early in the chapter, but it ties in later when Nick actually meets Gatsby.
Another change we see in Gatsby is when he goes to meet Tom’s mistress. This is strange because Tom is married to his cousin, Daisy. Also Nick has never been interested in drama, but he can’t help being intrigued to find out who Tom’s mistress is, “The fact that he had one [a mistress] was insisted upon wherever he was known. His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants...