To What Extent Is Nick Carraway A Reliable Narrator In The Great Gatsby

Ashraf El­Khatib

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Ms Loebach
ENG­4U
2015­03­24 Nick as an Unreliable Narrator Nick Carraway can be seen as the best person to tell the story of Gatsby, he knows all of the main characters well being cousins with Daisy, going to Yale with Tom and being Gatsby\s neighbor. Although he is in the perfect position to narrate effectively his involvement with these characters has caused him to narrate otherwise. Due to his emotions and feelings towards other people in the novel and his social status Nick is out of touch with most of the characters, dishonest, and biased, making him an unreliable narrator. Nick does not earn as much money and is much more poor than all his friends in the book. Although he attends parties and dinners with the residents of East and West Egg Nick
Although Nick refers to himself as an honest man when he says “ I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known”(44) it is clear to the reader that he is not. From the beginning of the book Nick is aware of Toms affair with Myrtle and he does nothing about it. He does not say anything to Daisy or to George Wilson, if he was truly and honest person he would tell one of them. In the novel Nick refers to Jordan as “incurably dishonest” (43) but by the end of the book he meets with Jordan she calls him a bad driver and said “ I thought you were a rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride”(137). When she calls him a bad driver she means that he is someone who makes bad decisions and just as Jordan is a
“rotten driver”(43) because she is dishonest, she calls Nick a bad driver. Nick refers to himself as honest but to other people such as Jordan he might not be. Lastly, at Gatsby 's funeral Nick lies to

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Gatsby 's father. After seeing Gatsbys body, his father says that “If he’d of lived, he’d of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill. He’d of helped build up the country”(130) in reply to
Nick says early in the book that he is honest but the reader sees that after the time he spent in the east he has been corrupted, Nick is narrating this story after it all happened meaning that when he is narrating he is dishonest person making him unfit to narrate the story. Nick begins the novel by reciting advice his father gave him when he was younger about judging people. Although he claims to not judge people, when speaking to Jordan in chapter three he says “Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply”(43) this shows how
Nick is sexist and treats and judges women differently than he treats men, highlighting his biased towards certain groups of people. According to Nick the advice from his father has caused him
“to reserve all judgments”(1) but really, throughout the whole novel Nick is judging almost everyone who is a part of new money, except of course for Gatsby. Nick says that “Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction”(2) this quote alone shows how Nick favors Gatsby throughout the novel. Nick also tells Gatsby that he’s “worth the whole damn bunch put together” (118) referring to the rest of the new money and old