Direct Characterization In The Great Gatsby

To take a photo, cameras absorb light through the lens allowing the image to focus and be digitally broken down. To change how a photo is taken and furthermore interpreted, the lens is the most important component in photography. Often times, photographers will try many different types of lens before deciding on one that provides the most clarity.
Of the tools a writer is given in the constraints of written words, characterization is perhaps the most useful in conveying the central themes in works of fiction. Novels are, after all, just characters interacting in fabricated plots to expose each other’s faults in turn, communicating some greater message about the human condition as naturally judgmental. Many who analyze popular works of fiction, such as The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, fail to notice the narrator of the story as a character to be analyzed like any other; the narrator, Nick Caraway, despite his claims of honesty and objectivity within the first couple pages of the novel, should be questioned on his reliability as the narrator of the novel. Only by understanding the character that acts as a lens through which we see every other person of perhaps more importance, can the reader understand Fitzgerald’s message. However, regardless of which way it is interpreted, there is no way for the reader to consider Nick as honest throughout the novel. His emotional involvement and clear bias make him turn a blind eye to many …show more content…
This fact is not only demonstrated through Nick’s behavior as a character in the novel, but also in his “telling of the story,” as the narrator. What readers often oversee is the possibility that the entire story is really just a biased opinion, a fabricated representation of the reality in favor of Nick’s viewpoints on upper-class society and a twisted from of romanticist