Sunday, April 9, 2017
Does Nick Carraway Judge People?
In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the narrator the story is a man named Nick Carraway. On the first page, Carraway says that he is "inclined to reserve all judgements" about people, and in the first three chapters, it is very hard to tell if this is true. The way the book is written, he seems to assume certain emotions and sometimes characteristics from physical attributes of people. However, I think that this is just the way Fitzgerald described people in his writing. I think that this is different from actually judging (forming a conclusive opinion) the people that Carraway meets. For example, when we first meet Tom Buchanan, Carraway describes his physical attributes, and the fact that he was a football player. Carraway also describes him and his family as "enormously wealthy," which is a fact, not a judgement. Caraway withholds from the reader any opinionative judgements (if he has any) about Tom Buchanan, and I have found that he has done the same for all the other characters we have met so far. He describes them physically, and gives us facts about them, but none of his positive or negative opinions about them.
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Great Observation. I like how you pointed out that there is a possibility for the way we perceive judgements to be different to the way Fitzgerald may perceive them which could become very interesting as we read on in the rest of the book.
ReplyDeleteI feel like the way he describes people may not have a very direct negative or positive opinion. However, the words he uses to describe a character's attribute or personality gives off almost a vibe of a positive or negative opinion. There are times where he is judging someone and making it seem negative or positive, but I guess with Fitzgerald we will never know for sure.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you looked and perceived the way on how Carraway perceived things. Everybody perceives things completely differently than someone else.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it could just be the way Fitzgerald wrote and it was a way for Nick to explain facts about a character but I definitely found times were Nick seemed to be making a lot of assumption or basing his judgment on few facts.
ReplyDeleteI do definitely agree for the most part, however, I do believe that Nick, in a way, sort of subconsciously conveys judgement without explicitly stating so.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement that Nick does not truly judge people and does only state their facts. The reader from these facts creates judgements about the characters.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement and also believe that we Nick's opinions through his agreement with other people thoughts and actions.
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