Nick Carraway tells the story of The Great Gatsby, and also plays an honorable and trustful character in the novel. Throughout the story, developes and adjusts to life on the East Coast to better fit in the intellectual, rich and snobby East and West Eggs of Long Island. As a narrator, Nick is an observer and analyzes all the people he meets, always learning more about his new home and its population. He gives many long descriptive passages referring to these, and thanks to his honesty he provides an analysis unparalleled to that of any another possible narrator. He may not be the main character of the story, but he manages to bring the two main characters of the novel together, and represents the missing link between the obsessive Jay Gatsby and the pretty yet vain Daisy Buchanan.
"Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged.
The cover of the first edition of The Great Gatsby...
The Great Gatsby (1926 film)
The Great Gatsby (1974 film)The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east (p.24)".
Nick arrives on Long Island from the Midwest, and being a bit out of his element as an innocent, traditional and conservative type of person from a typical Midwestern lifestyle, he stays informed but uninvolved at first in order to analyze the people he comes across. He builds confidence and responsibility amidst his peers, does not become selfish, and begins to involve himself with the main characters in a positive way. He aspires to somewhat arrange the conflicts going on without showing his opinion to them and while keeping his honorable integrity. His thoughts and opinions are kept to himself, and this is effective because no character develops a hatred towards him at all, and the reader gets to know everything without someone in the story getting offended.