Nick Carraway () is a fictional character and narrator in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. The character is a Yale University alumnus from the American Midwest, a World veteran, and a newly arrived resident of West Egg on Long Island, near New York City. He is a bond salesman and the neighbor of enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby. He facilitates a sexual affair between Gatsby and Nick's second cousin, once removed, Daisy Buchanan, which becomes the novel's central conflict. Carraway is easy-going and optimistic, although his optimism fades as the novel progresses. After witnessing the callous indifference and insouciant hedonism of the idle rich during the riotous Jazz Age, he chooses to leave the eastern United States forever and returns to the Midwest.
The character of Nick Carraway has been analyzed by scholars for nearly a century and has given rise to a number of critical interpretations. According to scholarly consensus, Carraway embodies the pastoral idealism of Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald identifies the Midwest—those "towns beyond the Ohio"—with the perceived virtuousness and rustic simplicity of the American West and as culturally distinct from the decadent values of the eastern United States. Carraway's decision to leave the East evinces a tension between a complex pastoral ideal of a bygone America and the societal transformations caused by industrialization. In this context, Nick's repudiation of the East represents a futile attempt to withdraw into nature. Yet, as Fitzgerald's work shows, any technological demarcation between the eastern and western United States has vanished, and one cannot escape into a pastoral past.
Since the 1970s, scholarship has often focused on Carraway's sexuality. In one instance in the novel, Carraway departs a party with a man described as feminine, and—following suggestive ellipses—next finds himself standing beside a bed while the man sits between the sheets clad only in his underwear. Such passages have led scholars to describe Nick as possessing a queerness and prompted analyses about his attachment to Gatsby. For these reasons, the novel has been described as an exploration of sexual identity during a historical era typified by the societal transition towards modernity.
The character has appeared in various media related to the novel, including stage plays, radio shows, television episodes, and feature films. Actor Ned Wever originated the role of Nick on the stage when he starred in the 1926 Broadway adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City. That same year, actor Neil Hamilton played the role in the now lost 1926 silent film adaptation. In subsequent decades, the role has been played by many actors including Macdonald Carey, Lee Bowman, Rod Taylor, Sam Waterston, Paul Rudd, Bryan Dick, Tobey Maguire, Corbin Bleu, and others.
Inspiration for the character
Fitzgerald modeled the character of Nick Carraway largely on himself. As a young Midwesterner from Minnesota, Fitzgerald attended Princeton, an Ivy League school, whereas Carraway attends Yale. Much like how Nick's father owns a hardware store, Fitzgerald's father owned a furniture store in Minnesota until 1898.: "In the early 1890s, shortly after marrying Mollie McQuillan, Edward Fitzgerald organized the American Rattan & Willow Works, which manufactured wicker furniture". Many scholars, including Fitzgerald's close friend and critic Edmund Wilson, posit that Fitzgerald created the character of Nick as an ideal version of himself. His "characters—and himself—are actors in an elfin harlequinade," Wilson stated.
Nick's Midwestern viewpoint reflects Fitzgerald's own experience. Edmund Wilson observed that Fitzgerald's views reflected "the Middle West of large cities and country clubs", much as writer Sinclair Lewis represented "the Middle West of the prairies and little towns". Wilson ascribed to Fitzgerald the strengths and weaknesses he saw in 1920s Midwesterners including a "sensitivity and eagerness for life without a sound base of culture and taste". He posited that, when Fitzgerald "approaches the East, he brings to it the standards of the wealthy West—the preoccupation with display, the love of magnificence and jazz, the vigorous social atmosphere of amiable flappers and youths comparatively unpoisoned as yet by the snobbery of the East".
When creating the character of Carraway, Fitzgerald originally named the character Dud.: "Daisy was originally Ada, and Nick was originally Dud." In earlier drafts of the novel, the character shared a romance with Daisy Buchanan prior to their reunion on Long Island.: "Earlier in the draft, Fitzgerald removed a number of references to a previous romance between Daisy and Nick". Fitzgerald's rewrites excised any romantic past between Nick and Daisy, as well as added and then deleted a passage implying that Nick departed a job after a male acquaintance amorously pursued him.: "What is perhaps revealing are Nick's original words, the words Fitzgerald began to use, then scratched out and buried beneath the curious reason Nick offers for his escape from this girl. The words he starts to use, to explain the breakup, are 'but her brother began favoring me with . . . '" He also changed the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator to Nick's subjective perspective.: "The effect of the third-person biographical form is to strengthen Nick's function as narrator and to obscure Gatsby's voice. Indeed, Gatsby speaks little in the novel; Nick reports most of what Gatsby says to him—but in Nick-ese, not in Gatsby-ese." These alterations introduced considerable ambiguity regarding both Nick's reliability as a narrator and his sexuality which became the focus of scholarship.
The ambiguity of Nick's sexuality reflects a similar ambiguity regarding Fitzgerald's own sexuality. During his lifetime, Fitzgerald's sexuality became a subject of debate among his friends and acquaintances.: "Fitzgerald's career records the ambient, dogging pressure to repel charges of his own homosexuality".: According to biographer Matthew J. Bruccoli, author Robert McAlmon and other contemporaries in Paris publicly asserted that Fitzgerald was a homosexual, and Hemingway avoided Fitzgerald due to these rumors. As a youth, Fitzgerald had a close relationship with Father Sigourney Fay,: "Biographers describe Fay as a 'fin-de-siècle aesthete' of considerable appeal; 'a dandy, always heavily perfumed,' who introduced the teenaged Fitzgerald to Oscar Wilde and good wine". a possibly gay Catholic priest,: "If Fay was a homosexual, as has been asserted without proof, Fitzgerald was presumably unaware of it". and Fitzgerald used his last name for the idealized romantic character of Daisy Fay. After college, Fitzgerald cross-dressed during outings in Minnesota, and he flirted with other men at social events.: "In February he put on his Show Girl make-up and went to a Psi U dance at the University of Minnesota with his old friend Gus Schurmeier as escort. He spent the evening casually asking for cigarettes in the middle of the dance floor and absent-mindedly drawing a small vanity case from the top of a blue stocking".
While drafting The Great Gatsby, rumors about Fitzgerald's alleged homosexuality dogged him among the American expat community in Paris, and Ernest Hemingway avoided him due to these rumors. In his memoir A Moveable Feast, Hemingway wrote that Scott "looked like a boy with a face between handsome and pretty. He had... a delicate longlipped Irish mouth that, on a girl, would have been the mouth of a beauty... The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more." After Hemingway broke off relations, Fitzgerald wrote in his notebook: "I really loved him, but of course it wore out like a love affair."
Fitzgerald's wife Zelda Sayre doubted his heterosexuality and called him a closeted homosexual. Zelda belittled him with homophobic slurs and alleged that Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway engaged in sexual relations.: "Zelda extended her attack on Fitzgerald's masculinity by charging that he was involved in a homosexual liaison with Hemingway". This accusation possibly stemmed from Hemingway examining Fitzgerald's genitalia in a Paris restroom after Zelda taunted him over his penis size. In his 1964 memoir A Moveable Feast, Hemingway described Fitzgerald's genitalia as normal. Both Fitzgerald's mistress Sheilah Graham and acquaintance Arnold Gingrich, who had once seen him in an open bathrobe, confirmed its average size, lending credence to Hemingway's claim that Zelda sought to destroy her husband with unfounded attacks. Such incidents strained the Fitzgeralds' marriage at the time of the novel's publication.
Although Fitzgerald's sexuality remains a subject of scholarly debate, such biographical details lent credence to scholarly interpretations that his fictional characters such as Nick Carraway, Jordan Baker, and others are gay or bisexual surrogates. Scholars particularly focus on Fitzgerald's description of his mind in a 1935 letter as "half feminine". Although "born masculine,": "Being born 'masculine,' but feeling 'half-feminine,' Fitzgerald was personally interested in sexual differentiation from an early age." Fitzgerald described himself as "half feminine—at least my mind is... Even my feminine characters are feminine Scott Fitzgeralds.": The novel "includes some queer energies, to be sure—we needn't revisit the more gossipy strains of Fitzgerald biography to note that it's Nick who delivers the sensuous goods on Gatsby from beginning to end".: Fitzgerald wrote that "we are all queer fish, queerer behind our faces and voices than we want any one to know or than we know ourselves. When I hear a man proclaiming himself an 'average, honest, open fellow,' I feel pretty sure that he has some definite and perhaps terrible abnormality".
Fictional character biography
Nick Carraway grew up in the Midwestern United States, a region he describes as "the ragged edge of the universe." His family claimed descent from the Dukes of Buccleuch and owned a hardware business since 1851, maintaining prominence and wealth for generations. Due to his privileged upbringing, Carraway's father cautioned him against passing judgment on individuals who did not enjoy the same advantages. After his graduation from Yale University in 1915 and the United States' entry into World in 1917, Nick served in the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion of the 3rd Division.: "Your face is familiar," he said, politely. "Weren't you in the First Division during the war?" "Why, yes. I was in the Twenty-eighth Infantry." "I was in the Sixteenth Infantry until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before.": "Your face is familiar," he said politely. "Weren't you in the Third Division during the war?" "Why, yes. I was in the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion." "I was in the Seventh Infantry until June nineteen-eighteen. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before."
After the Allied Powers signed an armistice with Imperial Germany in 1918, a restless Nick moved from the Midwest to West Egg, a wealthy enclave on Long Island, to learn about the bond business. He lives across the bay from his affluent second cousin, once removed, Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom Buchanan, formerly Nick's classmate at Yale. They introduce him to their cynical friend Jordan Baker, a masculine golf champion and heiress. Jordan and Nick embark upon an exploratory romance, although Carraway describes his interest in Jordan Baker as not love but "a sort of tender curiosity"."I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity."