How Does Nick Carraway Use Rebellion In The Great Gatsby

Bursting onto the American scene in the 1920’s, progressivism proliferates bringing with it new ideas and ways of thinking. Mixed with rebellion, prohibition, an economic boom, and a new wave of feminism, the progressive era challenges social benchmarks and allows Americans to satisfy themselves in newly acceptable indulgences. Most prominently, the new impression of rebellion persists against previously initiated social constructs revolving around relationships and credibility, hence becoming one of the largest progressive epidemics, spreading across the American population challenging people to stand up for themselves, their rights, and their desires.
F. Scott Fitzgerald captures and shares this new lifestyle in his novel, The Great Gatsby, to allow his audience the chance to travel back in time and experience this wave of living through the eyes of narrator Nick Carraway. Nick shares his personal experiences, as well as those of his friends from the first person omniscient point of view. Influenced by the new rebellion that the progressive era brought, Carraway tells his perspective of the events, becoming a fickle source of …show more content…
This enthralling progressivism leads Nick to a “decline and decay [like the] historicism of The Great Gatsby” (Turlish 443). Seconding this, David O'Rourke expresses that “Nick is not very intelligent” and “has at least a minor problem with honesty”, showing the decline and decay of Nick’s morals as he gets tangled in this one-sided love affair (O’Rourke 57-58). This furthers the understanding that the lying Carraway does is not only with the audience as a narrator, but with