Nick Carraway Gatsby Foil

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The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Nick Carraway is introduced as the protagonist, the foil to J. Gatsby, and the narrator. He is presented as a young man from Minnesota that travels to the West Egg in New York. Soon, Carraway is gradually pulled into the lives of the wealthy and sophisticated of East and West Egg. Due to his relationships with Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and others, Nick is able to undertake the many roles of the foil, protagonist, and the narrator of The Great Gatsby.
The character Nick Carraway tells a story in The Great Gatsby in which Jay Gatsby tries to attain happiness through wealth and riches. Although the novel is titled after Gatsby, Nick studies the actions of others and explains the events so that the individual grasps the motive of the theme. Throughout the novel, Nick gathers missing pieces of information about Gatsby to create foreshadowing for the reader. Carraway ends up being the only character that transforms throughout the story. …show more content…
Daisy and Tom are too frivolous and self-absorbed in living in wealth and Gatsby established himself a goal as a child. With that being said, all three of these characters resent change. Nick sees a variety of corrupt actions around him that these other characters do such as: adultery, lying, hypocrisy, and dirty business deals. He starts to shut them out by acting unnatural to fit in with his new ‘friends.’ An example of this is when Gatsby is ‘watching over’ Daisy. Nick narrates this in Chapter 8, "He, Gatsby, was clutching at some last hope and I couldn't bare to shake him free." (Fitzgerald pg.158) This reference demonstrates how Nick has shunned Gatsby and society’s unethical actions. Once he realized that the people he surrounded himself with were frauds, he begins to separate himself from the group. This is one of the primary examples of Nick’s
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