Nick carraway from 'Great Gatsby' as an Unreliable Narrator.pptx

1. Prepared by : Avani Jani
M.A Sem:1
Paper : 7: 20th Century Literature -2
Roll no: 3
Enrollment no: 4069206420220014
Submitted to: Department of English, MKBU.

2. Points to ponder:
1] What is ‘Unreliable Narrator’?
2] Nick Carraway as an Unreliable Narrator:
● “I was within and without”
● Description and Explanation
● Nick as Misleading hero

3. "Man is least himself when he talks in his
own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell
you the truth."
- Oscar Wilde. (FERGUSON, CHRISTINE. )

4. What is ‘Unreliable Narrator’ ?
● An unreliable narrator however, is not simply a narrator
who 'does not tell the truth' – what fictional narrator ever
tells the literal truth? Rather an unreliable narrator is one
who tells lies, conceals information, misjudges with
respect to the narrative audience – that is, one whose
statements are untrue not by the standards of the real
world or of the authorial audience but by the standards of
his own narrative audience. ... In other words, all fictional
narrators are false in that they are imitations. But some
are imitations who tell the truth, some of people who lie.
(Rabinowitz, Peter J)
● "I have called a narrator reliable when he speaks for or
acts in accordance with the norms of the work (which is to
say, the implied author's norms), unreliable when he does
not." (Booth #)

5. ● The key concept in Booth's framework for the unreliable
narrator is that there is a distinction between the implied
author and the narrator in a given story.
● Although a narrator often relays the story to the reader
either as a personified character in the diegesis of a text or
as a disembodied voice that exists somewhere outside the
story world, the narrator is not the author of the story.
● The implied author is the image that a reader conjures of the
agent who invents the story text, an image pieced together
from inferences derived from how the story is told.
● "[The implied author] is not the narrator, but rather the
principle that invented the narrator, along with everything
else in the narrative, that stacked the cards in this particular
way, had these things happen to these characters, in these
words or images" (Story and Discourse).

6. ● [The implied author] is not the narrator, but rather the principle
that invented the narrator, along with everything else in the
narrative, that stacked the cards in this particular way, had
these things happen to these characters, in these words or
images. Unlike the narrator, the implied author can tell us
nothing. He, or better, it has no voice, no direct means of
communicating. It instructs us silently, through the design
chosen to let us learn. (Story and Discourse)
● The narrator's unreliability is frequently manifested in a
conflict between the narrator's presentation of scene
and his or her interpretive summaries or commentaries,
and is signaled by the linguistic habits that indicate how
those interpretations might be colored.

7. Nick Carraway as an Unreliable Narrator:
● Nick Carraway is the narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The
Great Gatsby." He is a young man from the Midwest who moves
to New York City to work in the bond business. Nick becomes
neighbors with the wealthy and mysterious Jay Gatsby, and
through his interactions with Gatsby and others in their social
circle, he witnesses the excesses and moral decay of the Jazz
Age.
● Nick is often seen as a moral guide in the novel, as he observes
the actions of the other characters with a critical eye and
provides insight into their motivations and behaviors. He is
conflicted about the lifestyle of his wealthy neighbors and the
ethical compromises they make to maintain their status.

8. ● Throughout the novel, Nick is also
struggling with his own identity and
place in society. He is a thoughtful and
introspective character who is trying to
find his own way in the world while
grappling with the contradictions and
complexities of the people around him.
● In the end, Nick emerges as a
sympathetic and complex character
who provides a nuanced perspective on
the themes of love, wealth, and the
American Dream that are central to the
novel.(Kind, Leah,)

9. “I was within and without,
simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life”
- Nick Carraway.
(Fitzgerald #)
● I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious
natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores .... Reserving
judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something
ifI forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense
of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth. (Fitzgerald #)
● This advice comes from the vantage of the narrative frame. Nick addresses the
reader directly, outside of the context and the boundaries of the tale he is about to
tell.
● Nick seems aware of the pretentiousness in these opening pages; he invites the
reader to begin judging him here at the outset, to recognize the foundation of his
strength - a deeply rooted code of behaviour - as well as his limitations. (Lynn #)

10. Description & Explanation:
Even from the very beginning
of this novel, the narration
invites readers to feel subtle
distinctions between
description and explanation.
The narration gives readers two
types of impressions: one created
through descriptions of places,
things, and events, and another
created by Nick’s responses and
reflections. The pattern exhibits
itself, for example, in Daisy’s story
of the butler’s nose and her
comparison of Nick to an absolute
rose. (Carlisle, E. Fred)
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically.
“It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the
butler’s nose? ... Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to
be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a
silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from
morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose.”
… “I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a---
of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss
Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”(Fitzgerald #)

11. In the first instance, Daisy’s
anecdote is trivial and boring,
clearly not in accordance with the
preparation she makes; in the
second her comparison is ridiculous
and insincere, intentionally hiding
her real preoccupation. But in both
cases, Nick is captivated by Daisy’s
fabulous beauty-
“For a moment the last sunshine fell
with romantic affection upon her
glowing face; her voice compelled me
forward breathlessly as I listened” ;
“She was only extemporizing, but a
stirring warmth flowed from her, as if
her heart was trying to come out to
you concealed in one of those
breathless, thrilling words” . (Fitzgerald #)
In each example, the narration creates
two effects: But the two effects judge
Daisy oppositely: the former with distance,
the latter with engagement. From this we
can see that the response Nick
emphasizes reveals only one-half the way
the scene dramatizes Daisy. To
acknowledge such distinctions is already
to put the reader at some critical remove
from the narrator.

12. Nick as a misleading narrator:
● An example of Nick’s exceeding responses occurs in chapter 4 during his
automobile ride with Gatsby to New York.
● Fitzgerald’s aim in this scene is to create a coexisting feeling both active
and negative towards Gatsby by deepening our fascination with the
mystery of Gatsby.
● One technique Fitzgerald employs is to preserve the actual truth as a
centre in each of Gatsby’s falsehoods: he was educated, at least for a
few months, at Oxford; he did inherit a “good deal of money” from his
spiritual father, Dan Cody, though he was cheated of it; he was a genuine
war hero, even if a copy of Sergeant York.
● Through the episode we can see Nick’s cool unreasonable skepticism
and his response to Gatsby’s telling truth is prejudicial and extreme.
● During their journey Fitzgerald calls our attention repeatedly to Nick’s
filtering lens.

13. Work Cited:
Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. University of Chicago Press, 2010,
https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/The_Rhetoric_of_Fiction/8ehwWM_MUXEC?hl=en&gbpv=0. Accessed 10 March 2023.
Carlisle, E. Fred. “THE TRIPLE VISION OF NICK CARRAWAY.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 11, no. 4, 1965, pp. 351–60. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/26278564. Accessed 10 Mar. 2023.
Chatman, Seymour Benjamin. Story and discourse: narrative structure in fiction and film. Cornell University Press, 1978,
https://books.google.co.in/books?id=ewrOp9uPjYUC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Accessed 10 March 2023.
FERGUSON, CHRISTINE. “Oscar Wilde, ‘The Critic as Artist’ (1891).” Victorian Review, vol. 35, no. 1, 2009, pp. 64–68. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27793702. Accessed 10 Mar. 2023.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. DigiCat, https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/The_Great_Gatsby/K0KVEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0.
Kind, Leah, "Nick Carraway—Narrator Extraordinaire!" (2013). The Great Gatsby Unit. 2. https://digitalcommons.imsa.edu/gatsby/2

14. Lynn, David H. “Within and Without: Nick Carraway.” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-
19716-3_4#author-information.
Otway, Fiona. “The Unreliable Narrator in Documentary.” Journal of Film and Video, vol. 67, no. (Lynn
#)3–4, 2015, pp. 3–23. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5406/jfilmvideo.67.3-4.0003. Accessed 9 Mar. 2023.
Rabinowitz, Peter J. “Truth in Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 4, no. 1, 1977,
pp. 121–41. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24803075 Accessed 9 Mar. 2023.
Wall, Kathleen. “‘The Remains of the Day’ and Its Challenges to Theories of Unreliable Narration.” The
Journal of Narrative Technique, vol. 24, no. 1, 1994, pp. 18–42. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/30225397. Accessed 10 Mar. 2023.

15. Thank You