The Great Gatsby: Narration and Portrayal of Nick

So in this lesson we focused mainly on the characterisation of Nick and how he tells the story in The Great Gatsby. We also looked at how romantic images, motifs, symbols and ideas are combined with modern styles. We gathered that this use of modern style mixed with romanticism interrupts the narrative and shows corruption of the modern world on romance.

We then moved onto our analysis of chapter two where we made some headlines to summarise: "TOM BREAKS MISTRESSES NOSE".

Analysing nick as a character we found him to be quite judgemental and contradictory, which we found is reflected in the way he tells the story. Like in chapter two when Nick is drunk we suddenly find him calling Ms Wilson by her first name, Myrtle, this expresses nick unreliability when telling the story and gives us an insight into Nicks complex character.

We also looked at a significant quote from nick that pretty much summarises nicks character and his narrative manner at the same time in chapter 2 (page 24).

"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life"

This quote bring us to see the complexities of Nicks character and links very nicely with the way that we have to remember that nick is telling the story from a retrospective point of view however we often find him switching frames - from being a homodiegetic narrator speaking concurrently, to almost as a hetrodiegetic narrator, retrospectively reporting what is going on. i.e. "Gatsby turned out alright in the end" even though at that point of the story he hasn't even met Mr Gatsby yet.

We then looked at the role of the narrator.

David lodge, The Art of Fiction.

"The choice of the point of view from which the story is told…fundamentally affects the way readers will respond, emotionally and morally, to the fictional character and their actions."

The narrator is used to:
•Organise
•Select
•Present information.
The narrator may also:
•Comment and judge (used by Fitzgerald)
•Directly address the reader
•Be a participant in the story (used by Fitzgerald)
•Be a detached observer (used by Fitzgerald)
•Be ‘transparent’, appearing to speak with the voice of the author

We then looked at the advantages and disadvantages of first person narrative

Advantages
•Emotional involvement
•A sense of immediacy
•We can identify with narrator
•Realistic

Disadvantages
•We only get one viewpoint
•We don't get to see everything

From this we found that Fitzgerald has modified the first person narrative that nick portrays and very smartly makes Nick's character have knowledge of other people and events as well as other characters giving information during dialogue. This allows the reader to have a wider view of the diegesis world that Fitzgerald has created in a way that works around the disadvantages of first person narrative.

Eddie

Homework

1. 
   
   
   
   comment on this damn blog with character/narritve sheet




2. 
   
   
   
   read chapter 3




3. 
   
   
   
   watch video with bold man (W:\English\ENGLISH MR SADGROVE\Year 12\Gatsby videos\VIDEO_TS) even though i dont think it works.