Unreliable Narration in "The Great Gatsby"
Author(s): Thomas E. Boyle
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, Vol. 23, No. 1
(Mar., 1969), pp. 21-26
Published by: Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1346578 .
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UNRELIABLE NARRATION IN THE GREAT GATSBY
THOMAS E. BOYLE
ThomasE. Boyle (A.B., Universityof Richmond; M.A., Ph.D., University
of Illinois)has taughtat the Universityof Illinoisand at AlbionCollegeand
is presentlyan associateprofessorof Englishat ColoradoState College. He
has publishedarticleson Whitman,Melville, and ThomasWolfe in Discourseand in Modem Fiction Studiesand is currentlyat workon a critical
biographyof LorenEiseley for the Twayne United StatesAuthorsSeries.
I know you will accept my remarksin the spirit in which they are
offered-arrogance.I wish it didn'thave to be this way, but in what other
spiritcan I tell you how to read a novel you have alreadyread? It is unlikely that we will ever agree even on the standardby which The Great
Gatsbyor any otherliteraryworkis to be judged. This novel, for example,
has been interpretedas if it were metaphysics,sociology,and intellectual
history. One would neverknowfrommuch that is writtenon Gatsbythat it
is an aestheticobject (or better-process)standing,as Eliot said of the poem,
somewherebetweenthe authorand the reader. The more criticsI read the
moreconvincedI becomethat standardsare to literarycriticismwhat faith
is to religion. My argument,however,is neithera lamentover the diversity
of criticalframesof reference,nor a plea for criticalecumenicalism.The
warringfactionsamongcriticsare, to me, a testamentto the depth and the
differencesof human perception.
My argument,or articleof faith, is tlhatthe understandingof a novel,
the obverseof which is aestheticpleasure,is most meaningfullyachieved
throughan analysisof words, sounds,rhythms,and ideas-that which the
novel is. The meaningsuch an analysisyields is the rhetoricof fiction,a
phrasewhich, of course,bringsto mind that brilliantand seminalbook by
WayneC. Booth. The idea in Booth'svolumegermaneto The GreatGatsby
is his conceptof "distance,""distance"between the author'sperception,or
moreaccurately,the normsof the novel, and the perceptionof the narrator;
or, to put it anotherway, the "distance"between the narrator'sperception
and the reader'sperception.If this "distance"existswe have, to some degree, an unreliablenarrator,and critics,as well as students,are reluctantto
recognizethis devicesinceunreliablenarrators,as Boothsays, "makestronger demandson the reader'spowersof inferencethan reliablenarratorsdo."
Althoughhe makesonly cursoryreferenceto The GreatGatsby,Boothdraws
two conclusions,both of which, I submit,are wrong. He assertsthat Nick
has only a minor involvement in the events of the novel and that he "pro-
vides thoroughlyreliableguidance."A moreextensivetreatmentof Booth's
methodologyis found in 'The TripleVisionof Nick Carraway"by E. Fred
Carlislein the Winter 1965-66 issue of Modern Fiction Studies. Carlisle
corroboratesBooth'serrorby judging Nick's perceptionas "mature[and]
informed."
22
RMMLA BULLETIN
MARCH 1969
While my view of Nick Carrawayis new, it is not original. In 1966
there appearedindependentlytwo studies remarkablysimilarin evidence
cited and identicalin conclusionsreached: "AgainstThe GreatGatsby"by
GaryScrimgeourin the Autumn1966 issue of Criticismand the Thirteenth
chapterof Man's ChangingMasksby CharlesChild Walcutt. Scrimgeour
sees the narrator's
unreliabilityas a markof Fitzgerald'sconfusion;Walcutt
sees it as partof the novel'smystery. Ratherthan summarize,I referyou to
these sourceswhich examine the disparitybetween what Nick says and
what he does, and conclude that far from providing"thoroughlyreliable
guidance,"the narratoris shallow,confused,hypocritical,and immoral.
If this view of Carrawayis correct,the bulk of forty yearsof Gatsby
criticismatteststo our havingbeen taken in by Carrawayin somewhatthe
same way that Carrawayhas been taken in by Gatsby. A hypothesisso
startlingand so provocativecriesout for furtherexploration.In short,I have
tried to see Nick's unreliabilityas an integralpart of the book by finding
ways in which the normsof the novel are conveyedindependentof and in
contradictionto the explanationsCarrawayoffers.
We may be temptedto overlookthosenormsand to acceptthe explanationsof a man who assertshis objectivity("I'minclinedto reserveall judgments"),admitshis shortcoming(snobbishness),boastsof his virtues(tolerance and honesty),and desiresorderand morality("I wantedthe worldto
be in uniformand at a sortof moralattentionforever").But let us not be led
into temptationby one whose objectivityis "in consequence"of his father's
influence-theadvicethathas so indeliblyimpressedNick that he has "been
turning it over in ...
[his] mind ever since": "'just remember that all the
people in this world haven'thad the advantagesthat you've had.'" In fact,
Nick's advantages,as he later snobbishlyrepeats,are "fundamentaldecencies"which are "parceledout unequallyat birth." Thus, an arrogantpride
is revealedunderthe guise of objectivityand humility. Althoughhe boasts
of his tolerance,he thinks,after seeing the limousine"drivenby a white
chauffeur,in which sat threemodishnegroes,two bucksand a girl ... anythingcan happennow ... anythingat all." His shallowhypocrisyis further
underlinedwhen we recall that he has called Tom Buchanan'spseudoscientificbelief in Nordicsupremacy"nibblingat the edge of stale ideas."
Thisinstanceis but one of manyin which Nickhimselfdisplaysthe very
in others. Nick'shonestyand moralresponsiqualitieshe findsreprehensible
are
manifested
his
by
easy decisionto play the pandererfor Gatsby;
bility
it was "sucha little thing." His responseto a similarsituationin which he
is not involved,the affairbetweenTomand MyrtleWilson,is quite different:
"my own instinctwas to telephoneimmediatelyfor the police." Yet when
the police shouldbe broughtin, Nick insteadbecomesan accompliceafter
the fact by concealingDaisy's crime of manslaughter.His silence has an
importantbearingon the eventsof the novel; it resultsin Gatsby'smurder
and Wilson'ssuicide. We can hardlyaccept Booth'scontentionthat Nick's
role in the novel is one of "minorinvolvement."
NARRATION
IN The Great
UNrF,TJA,RTF
Gasby
23
To explorefurtherthe pertinenceof Booth'sconcept of "distance"to
the novel, I shouldlike to compareit to Melville's"Bartlebythe Scrivener."
Criticshave frequentlycalled attentionto the influenceof Conradon Fitzgerald as well as the influenceof Melville on Conrad,thus suggestinga
possiblesimilaritybetween Melville and Fitzgerald. In fact, I believe that
Melville'sunreliablenarratorin Bartleby does shed light on Carraway.
Bartlebyrepresentstotal negation,"I'd prefernot to"; Gatsby,impossible
achievement:"'Can'trepeatthe past?... Why of courseyou canl"' Both
narratorsare simultaneouslyattractedto and repelled by the unequivocal
absolutismto which they are exposed. We have the same "distance"between the narratorand Bartlebyas we have between Carrawayand Gatsby.
The inadequacyof both narratorsis accountedfor by their shallow and
morallyirresponsibleconcernfor order. 'The easiest way is best," says
Melville'snarrator.Bartlebyand Gatsbyrefuse to compromiseno matter
what the cost. Thus, to the narratorsfor whom facile compromiseis a way
of life, they are attractiveenigmas. Carraway,in short, is attractedto
Gatsby'svision preciselybecause he has compromisedwith the absurdities
which that vision exposes.
For Nick, too, the easiest way is best; compromiseis his modus
operandi.Thus,Catherine'slie at the inquestis a markof "character."Nick
allowsWilson to be "reducedto a man derangedby grief in orderthat the
case might remainin its simplestform." Nick continues,"But all this part
of it [meaningthe moraldimensionsof Daisy'scrime and its consequences]
seemedremoteand unessential."What Nick sees as unimportant,we see as
appalling irresponsibility.Throughoutthe novel Nick reveals more than
he is awareof. He is unawareof the shallownessof the belief that "personality is a seriesof unbrokensuccessfulgestures."It is his easy conformity
that dictateshis choice of vocation: "All [his] . . . aunts and unclestalked
it over as if they were choosinga prep school .., and finallysaid 'Why ye-es.'" And besides"Everybody[he] ... knew was in the bond business."
Nick believes that "life is much more successfullylooked at from a single
window,"and his window is framedby shallowness,hypocrisy,immorality,
and compromise.The window image pervadesthe novel. It is the limiting
lens throughwhich Nick confrontsexperience("It is invariablysaddening
to look throughnew eyes.") It is throughwindows (of trains, cars, and
busses) that Nick views the ash heaps, Eckleburg'seyes, Wilson's station,
his own middle west of tinsel and ornament,the green light, the pact between Daisy and Tom. By such devices Fitzgeraldreveals the norms of
the novel.
Or take that peculiarpassage in the conversationbetween Nick and
Gatsby:
(Gatsby) "'I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West ...'"
(Carraway) "'What part of the Middle West? . . "
(Gatsby) "'San Francisco.'"
24
RMMLA BLLETIN
MARCH
1969
Nick'sresponseis "I see." Whatin fact does Nick see? Is our response
to Gatsby'sunbelievableignoranceof geographythe sameas the narrator's?
So far as I know,the only commenton this passagesees it as "an aspectof
the ridiculous"-whateverthat means. We all note somethingfishy about
Gatsby'shouse guests,particularlythe Snells,Hammerheads,
Belugas,Whitand
both comic
achieves
effects
baits,
Fishguards. Obviously,Fitzgerald
and seriousby makingpuns with names. I submitthat the connectionbetween Gatsbyand San Franciscois made by a pun more subtle and more
seriousthanthosemade on the namesof the houseguests.The name Gatsby
is also a pun, Gatbeing the AngloSaxonwordfor gate, by the Scandanavian
suffixmeaningtown or city of. Now I suspectthat a readercan get a good
deal from the novel withoutrecognizingthe etymologyof Gatsby'sname,
yet I would alsomaintainthat the connectionbetween Gatsbyand the City
of the Gate is not fortuitousand that our responseto Gatsby's apparent
faux pas is not necessarilythe same as the narrator's.Thereis a good deal
that is fishy about Gatsbywhich Nick does not see. He seriouslyreports,
for example,that Gatsbyas a young man had spent over a year "beatinghis
way along the southshoreof Lake Superioras a clam-diggerand salmonfisher,"yet we know, as Fitzgeraldmust have known, that Lake Superior
containsneitheredible clams nor salmon. Once again there is distancebetween readerand narrator.But let me returnto the Gatsby/SanFrancisco
business.
The juxtaposition
of Gatsby'soriginin the MiddleWest and San Francisco is a figurativecompressionof the frontier,a kind of spatialtelescoping
of a temporalexperience.What was a fluid historicalphenomenonbecomes
for our examinationa staticimage embodiedin Gatsby. Obversely,Gatsby
is a temporaltelescopingof a spatialexperience:he is a descendantof the
Dutch sailorsfor whom floweredthe freshgreenbreastof the New World.
Gatsby'sfloweris a Daisy-and then thereis the light at the end of her dock
(which legally shouldbe red but allegoricallymust be green).
An even more obvious connectionbetween Gatsby and the romantic
frontierinterpretation
of the Americandream is his assumptionof a new
identityin a new land, that identity springingfrom his romanticidealism
(his "Platonic[dare I say Emersonian]conceptionof himself") and his
exposureto Dan Cody (Daniel Boone and Buffalo Bill), that questing
frontiersman,"a productof the Nevadasilverfields, of the Yukon,of every
rush for metal since seventy-five."Further,Gatsby'sfather unknowingly
revealsand Carrawayunknowinglyreportsthat Jay has been nurturedon
the Ben Franklinmyth of success, his plan to achieve moral perfection
significantlyinscribedon the flyleaf of HopalongCassidy.
It has, of course,become a criticalcommonplaceto point out that the
West is a spatialmetaphorof the historicalAmericanexperience,and that
the image of the West in this novel providesa measurementof that experience. Parenthetically,I suggestthat, in additionto the ratherobvious de-
UNRELIABLENARRATIONIN
The Great Gatsby
25
tails just cited, Fitzgerald has compressed in the novel a judgment of still
other elements of our heritage, for example, the eyes (blue and gigantic) of
T. J. Eckleburg, that "wild wag of an oculist," suggest the transparent eyeball of Emerson bathed in the blithe air above "gray land and the spasms
of bleak dust, ... a valley of ashes-a fantastic farm where ashes grow like
wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the
forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the
powdery air." The optimism of Emerson in the woods is measured by the
twentieth century image of Eckleburg's eyes brooding over the solemn dumping ground. The name Eckleburg itself traced to its German roots means burg
or city of nausea, disgust. Eckleburg is to Emerson what Wolfscheim is to
the Dutch sailors. The edge of that wild expansive ocean from which the
sailors first spied the "fresh-green breast of the New World" has become
"the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the
great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound."
Still another way by which we can distinguish "distance"between the
norms of the novel and the narrator'sperception is to examine Nick's attitude
toward Daisy, who for Gatsby is the embodiment of the American dream.
To come right out with it I contend that Nick, too, is in love with Daisy.
How else can we account for Nick's failure to recognize her vanity and
stupidity? Nick is charmed by Daisy's laugh and irrelevant remark, which
she thinks is very witty, "I'm p-paralyzed with happiness." He finds a "singing compulsion"in her voice, that "low thrilling voice ... that men who had
cared for her found difficult to forget." "It was," Nick says, "the kind of
voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement
of notes that will never be played again." For example:
Do youalwayswatchforthe longestdayof
theyearandthenmissit? I alwayswatch
forthelongestdayof theyearandthenmissit.
Daisy's mind is as vestigial as her husband's turning his garage into a stable
is anachronistic. This bitter retrogressionof American idealism is not only
the object of Gatsby's incarnation but also Carraway'sinfatuation. Else how
could Nick describe Daisy's vapid anecdote of the butler's nose with these
words:
For a momentthe last sunshinefell with
romanticaffectionupon her glowing face;
her voice compelledme forwardbreathlessly
as I listened.
But, with characteristic unawareness, Nick compromises with his feelings
by using Jordan Baker as a surrogate Daisy and by having an affair with
the girl from New Jersey who works in the accounting office of Probity
Trust. Nick tells us that he is enchanted by thinking of entering the lives
26
RMMLA BULLETIN
1969
MARCH
of romanticwomen and adds, "no one would ever know or disapprove."
Andwhen the New Jerseygirl'sbrotherbeganthrowingmean looksin Nick's
direction,he lets the affair"blowquietly away."
In consideringthe novel as a criticismof the Americandream,we have
two mutuallyexclusiveinterpretations
dependingon our identificationwith
or distancefromthe narrator's
point of view. If we see Carrawayas mature
and informed,we believe with Nick that Gatsbyturnedout all right at the
end, that the dreamis good,and that it is what has happenedto the dream,
"whatfoul dustfloatedin the wakeof his dreams,"thatis corrupt.We accept
Nick'sjudgmentof Gatsby,"You'reworththe whole damn bunch." Or to
put it in the words of one critic who identifieswith Carraway,"[Gatsby]
representsthe unendingquest of the Americandream-foreverbetrayedin
fact, yet redeemedin men's minds. Gatsby is great because his dreamhowevernaive, gaudy, and unobtainable-isone of the grand illusionsof
man."
If, on the otherhand, we recognizethe narrator's
unreliability,we see
that Nick'sknowledgeof Gatsby'scorruptionand his belief that the dream
which he embodiesis "incorruptible,"
is a paradoxresolved only in our
awarenessof Nick's last and most seriouscompromisewith truth. Finally,
his moral responsibilityis facilely explainedas "provincialsqueamishness"
as he shakesTom Buchanan'shand, erasesa dirty word from the steps of
attendsGatsby's
Gatsby'shouse,and with his indomitableself-righteousness
funeral. On the level of plot he knowsmorethan he tells, but on the level
of the novel's rhetoriche tells more than he knows. In truth, dreamand
object were never united, not even for the Dutch sailors. As Nick has
panderedfor Gatsby,so Americahas "panderedin whispersto the Dutch
sailors'eyes." In shortit is not what has happenedto the dream,but the
dreamitself that is corrupt.Thereis here suggestedan importantconflictin
Americanfiction: Is our failure in not ascending the Big Rock Candy
Mountainor is it in our belief in the existenceof the mountainitself? I
submitthat the answermakesa difference.
As I beganby alertingyou to the narrator's
disarmingingenuousnesson
me
let
concludeby alertingyou to his euphonious
the firstpage of the novel,
If
in
eloquence the conclusion. we botherto examinethe simple logic of
Carraway'scoda, we find not a revelationof knowledge, awareness,or
foil to conceala seriouslyflawedand confused
maturity,but a characteristic
perception.
So we beaton, boatsagainstthecurrent,borneback
ceaselesslyinto the past.
The vehicle of the metaphoris a moving body of water; the tenoris the
passageof time. The current,then, indicatesdirectionand movement,past
to future. If we beat on againstthe current,we are tryingto move toward
the past, and if we are borneback, we are movinginto the future,not the
"past."