1. 1. 3 The relationship between other characters in the novel
Due to the relative relationship with Daisy, Nick get a chance to company with Tom, as a thoughtful young man , he feels disappointment to the lifestyle and the arrogance of the upper-class represented by the Bachanans. because of this unhappy travel, Nick knows the love affair of Tom and Myrtle, with the revelation, the third group of people come to the reader’s eyes. Such as Wilson, Myrtle’s husband, who kills Gatsby in the end; Jordan, Daisy’s friend, who nearly falls in love with Nick, and so on.
With Nick’s attendance, the three groups finally come to together in the end. After Wilson shooting Gatsby to death, the Buchanans deliberately disappear, and the Wilson’s both die, Nick is the final and sole dealer of the funeral of Gatsby. So to speak, Nick is the key to contact with all the groups of people in the novel. He is the key role to illustrate the story of Gatsby.
1. 2 The key to lead the way of narration in the novel
Fitzgerald has a very unique way to arrange his novel, the structural arrangement of the novel is unusual, readers do not meet the protagonist for a long time, about a quarter of the way into the story. Until readers do meet him, there is elaborate description of his context, and this elaborate context is provided by Nick. In dealing with the information of Gatsby, Nick seems to withhold it first to create a superb effect of misery and suspense. As his narration put forward, the series of the events develop naturally so that the novel is full of logic. Fitzgerald uses the modified first-person narrator in The Great Gatsby. Nick is charge with relating the story as he sees it, he witnesses the whole story and his qualification as a sympathetic listener is carefully established on the first page of the novel: “I am inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores…”[1]Such a characteristic is compulsory for an observer. As a key role to lead the way of narration , Nick informs the reader of what is happening or has happened in the novel by three methods. The following passages is aim to analyze Nick’s ways of dealing with narration.
1. 2. 1 Information eye-witnessed
In the The Great Gatsby, Nick often presents the account of other people, sometimes in their words, sometimes in his own word. He is initially placed at the edge of the story, his position naturally enables himself to witness and report personally a lot of the contemporary action. The method of narration mentioned is common in the novel, in a scene between Gatsby and Tom, this way of narration is implied.
“at this point Jordan and I tried to go, but Tom and Gatsby insisted with competitive firmness that we remains—as though neither of them had nothing to conceal and it would be a privilege to partake vicariously of their emotion”[1]
His presence is carefully justified in order to enable him to present an eye-witness account of this important incident.
1. 2. 2 Information heard of
To inform the reader of material about the story, Nick get a lot of information by listening to the others, especially a woman , whose name is Jordan Baker, she is one of the most technically useful characters in the book. It is she that tells Nick the brief wartime love affairs between Gatsby and Daisy. Here is a example:
“One October day in nineteen –seventeen –(said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a straight chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel)—I was walking along from one place to another, half on the side walks and half on the lawns”[1]
By this simple device, a past event is represented fully from Nick’s way of narration.
1. 2. 3 Reconstruction of information
When there are some events Nick has not witnessed in his own language, he reconstructs events from several sources---the newspaper, servants, his own imagination. In such a manner, Nick describe the day on which Wilson tracks down and shoots Gatsby and then kills himself, at first, he could have heard only from an account by Wilson’s sole companion, Michaelis, who runs a coffee shop near the Wilson garage, but when Wilson sets out alone in the early morning on his mission of death, Nick get the information from the newspaper or testimony at the inquest. As for the general situation of Gatsby’ death, because Gatsby is alone in that morning, Nick’s only resource is imagination. In Nick’s reconstruction of the shooting case, the entire series of events are put together in proper order, it is presented by Nick as connected narrator.
To conclude, Nick , as the first-person narrator, plays a leading role in the novel’s narration, it enable to avoid “the large false face peering around the corner of a character’s head”[5] with the function of Nick in narration, Fitzgerald achieves a realism to place the reader in direct touch with the action.
2 Nick’s role played in the themes of the novel
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary works. Themes in the Great Gatsby focus either on its quintessential vision of the American dream, romantic hope and its disillusion of Fitzgerald, and the symbolism. Nick , as a significant role, is functioning in all these aspects in the novel.转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net
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