Nick moves to West Egg in a hope to live the American Dream and become wealthy. However, after he gets closer to Gatsby, Jordan Baker, Tom Buchanan, and Daisy, who are the epitomes of wealth and corruption, Nick begins to care less and less about his goal. His business books on Midas, J.P. Morgan, and Maecenas remain untouched on the shelf and he begins to hate the very thing he wanted to become. After one of his excursions with Gatsby, Nick writes "I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart" (Fitzgerald 2). Nick wanted to be rich, but when he finally got a look into what being rich meant, his lust for wealth ended. Nick makes an insightful observation of himself when he states that "[He is] one of the few honest people [he has] ever known" (59). Nick sees the corruption and the bootlegging that Gatsby and his acquaintances had done to achieve their great wealth, and realizes that he is of good moral character and values honesty. By valuing honesty, the reader can rely on Nick as a narrator to give truthful facts about the summer of Gatsby 's death. In retrospect, Nick realizes that he and Gatsby are the same in some ways– both men want to be a part of a society that they were not born into, and both men came about their wealth in ways unlike those who were born wealthy; The Caraways "have a tradition that [they are] descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual …show more content…
At the end of the book, Nick still disapproves of Gatsby and the way he acquired his massive wealth, but he admires Gatsby 's ambition and desire to see his dreams come true. Nick tells Gatsby, "They 're a rotten crowd...You 're worth the whole damn bunch put together" (154). During his time in West Egg, Nick has realizes that the majority of the people Gatsby associated with were only concerned with money and social status, like Tom and Jordan, but Gatsby only strives to achieve this wealth in an attempt to impress Daisy and win her back. Though his means of achieving wealth were illegal, his intentions were pure, which Nick respects. He knows that Gatsby is the only one out of his entire social group that has a real purpose in life and a dream to strive for; Nick 's acknowledgement of Gatsby 's determination shows that he is a reliable narrator. Nick feels sorry for Gatsby 's dream girl Daisy, but he also knows that she is foolish and capricious at times. For example, when her daughter is born, she hopes that she will be "a fool – that 's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool" (17). Daisy knows that if she were a fool, she wouldn 't have known about Tom 's affair and she would have been much happier in life, had she not known she was a fool. However, Nick knows that if she really wanted to, she could