Gatsby Analysis - the Observant Participant

Tiffany Hwang

Mrs. McCown

American Literature 4

16 October 2007

The Observant Participant

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Nick is a character who is often part of a situation, yet never fully involved in the situation. He is able to see through the two different perspectives, and although he is never completely unbiased, he gains surprising insight from these two roles. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Nick’s summer spent with the Buchanans and Gatsby, both as an observer and as a participant in the action, becomes his passage to maturity; in the end Nick clearly sees the carelessness and selfishness surrounding his wealthy “friends.”

Throughout the novel, Tom and Daisy are constantly displaying their innate heedlessness and egocentricity, and as Nick observes and participates, his perspective of the couple becomes more and more negative. From the beginning of the story, it is clear that Tom and Daisy have a rocky relationship and an unhappy marriage. However, when Tom brings Nick to see Myrtle, his mistress, Nick is shocked at how he takes Myrtle away right in front of her husband. When Nick asks Tom whether or not Wilson knows, Tom replies that “he thinks she goes to see her sister in New York” and that “he’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive” (26). Tom is self-centered and egotistical because not only does he disrespectfully take Wilson’s wife away, but he also insults and looks down on Wilson, showing that he does not care about the welfare of anyone other than himself. After Myrtle is brutally slaughtered by a car driven by Daisy, Nick thinks that Tom would be too upset over Myrtle to even talk to Daisy, but when he looks through the window of Daisy and Tom’s house, he sees Daisy and Tom “sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table…talking intently across the table at her, and in his earnestness his hand…covered her own” (145). Not only has Tom forgotten about the mistress he just lost, but he is also now completely focused on Daisy, despite the fact that she was the one who killed Myrtle. This makes Tom seem even more heartless and selfish, because he stole Myrtle away, yet now that she is gone, he takes no time to grieve over her death, and instead decides that if he has lost his mistress, he does not want to risk losing his wife as well.

Nick is further convinced of Tom and Daisy’s indifference and inability to accept responsibility near the end of the novel, after the murder of Jay Gatsby. After Gatsby’s death, Nick calls Daisy and Tom to ask if they can come to Gatsby’s funeral, but finds out that “she and Tom [have] gone away…and taken baggage with them” (164). Instead of paying Gatsby the proper respects, Tom and Daisy choose to run from the scene in order to avoid getting caught in the midst of legal issues involving the death of Myrtle Wilson. Tom literally sends Wilson over to Gatsby’s; he and Daisy let Gatsby die for her crime. Finally, when Nick meets Tom for the last time, he realizes that he can’t “forgive [Tom] or like him,” but Nick sees that “what [Tom] had done was, to him, entirely justified…They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (179). During Nick’s summer at West Egg, Tom and Daisy manage to create much havoc in the lives of other people, yet in the end, instead of even attempting to make amends, the two merely walk away from the situation and continue living life as if nothing happened at all.

Not only do Tom and Daisy act as examples of carelessness and selfishness in the wealthy, upper class society, but Jordan Baker is also an equally arrogant and egotistical character. As Nick “grows up,” his admiration towards her turns to disdain due to her insensitive disposition. When Nick tells Jordan to drive more carefully, she replies that there is no need to drive any more carefully, for “it takes two to make an accident” (58). Jordan’s behavior is unbelievably reckless, and her way of living is obnoxiously self-centered. She believes she has the right to go around doing whatever pleases her, and does not realize that the world does not revolve around her needs. When Jordan attends Gatsby’s party, she and two other girls gossip about Gatsby, saying that “they thought he killed a man once” (44). Jordan, as well as the rest of the girls, is only gossiping to prove how well informed she is, and does not even bother to contemplate