Nick Acts As Gatsby's Confidant example essay topic

438 words
The Great Gatsby is a book filled with dynamic characters, written by a dynamic person. Throughout the book, the themes and situations are on many symbolic levels. The Great Gatsby is such a novel, that the hero is portrayed to the reader by a man who, with seemingly no effort, will not judge a man easily. He perceives him, takes him in, and analyzes him.

This man's name is not, in fact, Gatsby, but Nick Carraway, the narrator of the story. The man who is being perceived, of course, is Jay Gatsby, our hero. Our story, The Great Gatsby, starts out when Nick, a stock trader, moves to West Egg. West Egg is a part of Long Island where the "new" rich people live. "New" rich is a term used to describe people who have recently acquired their wealth, and have no connections in East Egg, where the people who have established their wealth live. Gatsby befriends Nick for a good reason, to meet his long lost love, Daisy, Nick's cousin and resident of East Egg.

Unfortunately for Gatsby, Daisy is married to Tom, a boisterous man who has taken in a mistress and everyone in the novel knows about it. Throughout the novel, Nick acts as Gatsby's confidant. A confidant is a person present when a hero needs someone to listen to his plight. We get to know Gatsby, even though he is bad because of the illegal liquor bootlegging operation he runs. We get to know Gatsby because we like the confidant. If Nick, the confidant, is Gatsby's friend, then Gatsby will be our friend as well.

This is true of all relationships that deal with Nick. For the most part, we will feel the same way towards a character as Nick does. The novel ends in explosion and uproar. Nick, knowing Gatsby's passion for Daisy, gets the two together for tea.

They rekindle their lost love for each other, and, for a long time, they concealed their love for each other from Tom, Daisy's husband. But, at a party, their love for each other found to be obvious, Tom realized it and became furious. Tom uses Gatsby's lifestyle of bootlegging to convince Daisy that she should stay away from Gatsby and come back to her husband. The story ends when Tom is partially responsible for the bullet in Gatsby's head.

In the final chapter, Nick reflects his opinions of Gatsby and the world around him that made him what he was.