Why Is Honesty Important In The Great Gatsby

Improved Essays
The Great Gatsby illustrates a genuine classic of Fitzgerald’s 1900’s work. This novel presents a party like lifestyle, but at the same time presenting an elegant lifestyle. Jay Gatsby, who is a fabulously wealthy man, reveals his lust for wealth and romance. This novel develops in a first person perspective, who is told by Nick, which in a way is an invisible and non-judgmental narrator. Sensitive humility demonstrates integrity, conscience, and patience, described by Nick Caraway while he narrates within the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Honesty is heavily expressed throughout the Great Gatsby. The honest man describes Nick Caraway personality throughout the novel in many different elements. For example, in the text Nick says “Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine, I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.". Nick is too polite and straightforward, however, he is not afraid to speak his mind. Nick still looks to visualize himself as a boy with high standards for everybody, yet sometimes meets with himself, so he can embrace himself on maintaining his standards. Nick constantly tries to be an honest man, while in the corrupt, high speed world of east coast society. As we see out in the novel, Nick
…show more content…
Scott Fitzgerald. We observe these elements by looking at events that occur in the novel, such as Nick caraway constant acts as an honest man. In addition, reveals how Nick high integrity towards life affects how he deals with society, while at the same time defines how he reacts towards the characters in the novel. Furthermore, we see how Nick conscience is establishing his personality while influencing his descions. In summary Nick Caraway encounters many obstacles throughout the novel, do to his vast personality traits of Sensitive

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The Great Gatsby Admirable

    • 1133 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Nick Caraway, of course, is no exception to this motif. However, by reanalyzing the narcissistic traits of the first chapter, readers may come upon the astounding fact that the beginning of the book foreshadowed Nick’s entire viewpoint throughout the book. One of the first instances of this is when Nick claims “[his] family have been prominent, well-to-do people in the Middle Western city for three generations,” (Fitzgerald 3). However, later in the book Nick directly tells Gatsby he is not rich. Nick, in many instances, attempts to portray himself as the underdog by alluring to not being rich and well-off.…

    • 1133 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    How does dishonesty influence an individuals’ ability to be happy? In the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald comments on a variety of concepts; Self-image, judgement, happiness, and so on. Out of all the themes, he seems to develop the idea of happiness more often than not. He sets up the groups of people in very distinct social classes; East Egg and West Egg. This starts the contrast to the way humans do things just because of the social standing they classify themselves with.…

    • 1100 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Nick has lost who he is really is due to the society of wealth and their alliances through secrets and…

    • 1306 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Everyone lies. It is the truth, and it is explained with great depth in Stephanie Ericsson’s essay. She claims, “We lie. We all do. We exaggerate, we minimize, we avoid confrontation, we spare people’s feelings, and we conveniently forget, we keep secrets, we justify lying to the big-guy institutions.”…

    • 1390 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Deceit: The action or practice of deceiving someone by concealing or misrepresenting the truth. This is the definition many people use when describing the narrator of the story, Nick Carraway; however, this is ultimately the glue that holds The Great Gatsby together. Fitzgerald uses Nick for a way to embody the thought that even the best of us fall. This, however, does not prove him to be “unreliable” or “untrustworthy”. The way Fitzgerald has Nick give away information, contradiction of himself, and judgement of others is so that the audience has to hold fast till the end to find the truth that lies behind the veil of “lies”.…

    • 1367 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Fitzgerald incorporates his own life into the novel in each character represent someone close to him or himself. Understanding of Fitzgerald’s life allowed me to infer what the characters felt and thought when they acted along with interpreting the misfortune of the novel. I recommend the reading of this novel for teenagers and adults to experience a different time period as well as a distorted traditional love story…

    • 1021 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Many people disagree with the meaning of morality. Morality is known as the separation between good and evil. The line can easily be blurred because what one person believes to be bad another person could believe is good due to the way they were raised. Every character has moments in the book where they are immoral but some more so than others.…

    • 477 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the beginning, Nick establishes his moral uprightness, stating that "I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known. " In addition, Nick proudly states that he graduated from Yale twenty-five years after his father 's graduation and that his "prestigious" family made their fortune in the "wholesale hardware business." In contrast to his declaration of moral uprightness, it is vital to the narrative that the true nature of Nick 's character is revealed. For instance, Nick is constantly surrounded by deceit and infidelity, observing immorality and dishonesty, but chooses to not expose the infidelity.…

    • 1039 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Nick himself was also disillusioned; “Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I has ever known” (Fitzgerald, 39), thus characterizing himself in opposition to the masses. He is “inclined to reserve all judgments” (Fitzgerald, 3), events in the novel do not attest to his self-characterization. Though he wants to take the moral high ground, his best friend ends up being probably one of the more morally corrupt characters, Gatsby. He also says about Jordan’s cheating during her tournament, “Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, and then I forgot” (Fitzgerald, 38). His utter awe and wonder of this “new…

    • 2691 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    To continue, Nick is unreliable as a narrator because he makes rude comments about other people. Nick says, “I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me” (Fitzgerald 1). Nick states that he is a kind person and is a trustworthy friends but he is unreliable because he judges them for their choice. The author wrote, “Nick is constantly making judgements and associations that spring from his own education. Sometimes his judgments, based on his own intellectual viewpoint, seem harsh when he is dealing with an emotional, human situation” (Wolok 1).…

    • 1304 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout “The Great Gatsby”, published by award-winning author F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925, multiple characters are shown to undergo major changes in their personalities or the way they are portrayed. Be it the concept of Daisy as a pure, angelic being at the beginning quickly morphing into one of her as a superficial person, or the perception of Gatsby as a rich, enigmatic man contorting into one of him as a naïve and blind protagonist, each character’s development affects the book’s plot and works for character development. At the forefront of this development is the narrator himself, Nick Carraway, as he changes radically to understand the world around him. Take, for example, the way that Nick’s naïveté in the introduction is overtaken, resulting in him becoming…

    • 765 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Another example of Nick contradicting his own claim of not judging others is at Gatsby’s funeral he says “They were careless people Tom and Daisy they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money” (118). Even though this is true Nick once again does not withhold his judgment as he claims to show his bias towards Gatsby and his hatred toward the Buchanans. Another example of Nick being an unreliable narrator is him being drunk during two very important parts of the story. The first time Nick was intoxicated during the novel is at Myrtle's party. Nick says “ I have only been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happens has a dim and hazy cast over it”(33).…

    • 1490 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Nick is an upstanding young man from a well to do Western family. Despite coming from a wealthy family, Nick was taught the value of reserving judgement at a young age by his father who said “Remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages you’ve had”(1). Nick took this advice to heart and managed to be a fairly accepting person and withheld judgement upon those people who didn 't have the same experiences and opportunities that he had. This treatment towards others allowed Nick to be friends with people as different from each other as Gatsby is from the Buchanans. Throughout the majority of the novel, Nick gives a fair unbiased eye to the people and events that he witnesses, however one of the last phrases he says to Gatsby is “Worth the whole damn bunch put together”(154).…

    • 1432 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Dishonesty In Gatsby

    • 1470 Words
    • 6 Pages

    It reflects on the dishonesty from many characters, Nick in particular, that led to misfortune and tragedy. Fitzgerald tells the reader that those who lie will bring nothing but bad, much like a bad driver who will cause a…

    • 1470 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Great Gatsby is a classic piece of american fiction. The plot of this story is a midwest native Nick Carraway goes to New York in search of the American dream. Nick, a wanna-be writer, moves in next door to a millionaire named Jay Gatsby and across from his cousin Daisy and his husband Tom. Nick becomes drawn into the captivating world of the wealth and as he bears witness to their illusion and deceit pens a tale of impossible love, dream and tragedy. People have been asking why F. Scott Fitzgerald picked “The Great Gatsby” for the title of this novel and what truly makes Gatsby so “great”.…

    • 1059 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays