In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the romantic plot central to the story is the complicated relationship of the title character and Daisy Buchanan, a girl he’s been infatuated with for years. Focused more on the novel’s narrator, Nick Carraway, another fascination becomes evident: Nick’s great interest in Jay Gatsby. Through Nick’s interactions with several men and women, Fitzgerald makes it obvious that Nick is attracted to men.
The first scene in which Nick is shown to have more than a platonic interest in a fellow male character takes place in the second chapter of The Great Gatsby. Nick and Mr. McKee, a “pale, feminine man” (30) are riding the elevator, leaving a party. McKee invites Nick to have lunch with him someday, when the elevator boy snaps …show more content…
In the very beginning of The Great Gatsby, Nick states that he “wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction-- Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.” (2). Nick hates the rich and entitled world that Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby live in, the world that Gatsby personifies so well. And yet Nick cannot hate him, even writes a book about him. Near the end of the story, Gatsby invites Nick to go swimming. Nick can’t, but he “didn’t want to leave Gatsby” (153). He departs anyway, but turns around one last time: “‘They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’ I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him” (154). Though Nick retrospectively gushes about Gatsby from beginning to end of the novel, this is the only time he ever admits his feelings to Gatsby. The “bunch” includes Tom, whom Nick can’t stand, but also Daisy, Nick’s beloved cousin, and even Jordan, the woman Nick talked himself into being “half in love with”
The first scene in which Nick is shown to have more than a platonic interest in a fellow male character takes place in the second chapter of The Great Gatsby. Nick and Mr. McKee, a “pale, feminine man” (30) are riding the elevator, leaving a party. McKee invites Nick to have lunch with him someday, when the elevator boy snaps …show more content…
In the very beginning of The Great Gatsby, Nick states that he “wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction-- Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.” (2). Nick hates the rich and entitled world that Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby live in, the world that Gatsby personifies so well. And yet Nick cannot hate him, even writes a book about him. Near the end of the story, Gatsby invites Nick to go swimming. Nick can’t, but he “didn’t want to leave Gatsby” (153). He departs anyway, but turns around one last time: “‘They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’ I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him” (154). Though Nick retrospectively gushes about Gatsby from beginning to end of the novel, this is the only time he ever admits his feelings to Gatsby. The “bunch” includes Tom, whom Nick can’t stand, but also Daisy, Nick’s beloved cousin, and even Jordan, the woman Nick talked himself into being “half in love with”