Rant: People keep saying the narrator in 'The Great Gatsby' is unreliable because he's biased, but that's not the real reason.

In my book club last Tuesday, three people said Nick Carraway is an unreliable narrator just because he likes Gatsby. That misses the point. The book shows he's unreliable from the FIRST page when he says he's 'inclined to reserve all judgments,' then judges everyone for 180 pages. I had to pull my copy and read that opening line out loud. It's about his stated morals versus his actions, not just who he likes. Has anyone else's group gotten stuck on this?

3 comments

3 Comments

nelson.wesley11d agoMost Upvoted

Exactly. You're both right, but you're talking about different things. Jake's right that the bias is the point, but the original poster nailed the actual proof. The opening line is a direct lie. He says he reserves judgment, then calls his own father "snobbish" two paragraphs later. The book is him failing to live up to his own stated rules. That's way more interesting than just saying he likes Gatsby. My advice? Next meeting, ask them to read the first two pages out loud. The evidence is right there.

faithwalker1d ago

Remember my high school teacher making us act out that opening scene. I played Nick and had to say "I'm inclined to reserve all judgments" with a straight face while another kid read the part where Nick calls his dad snobbish. The whole class started laughing because the lie was so obvious when you heard it out loud. It wasn't about bias, it was about him being a hypocrite from sentence one. That performance changed how I saw the whole book.

jakeb2511d ago

Hold up, you're totally overcomplicating it. The bias IS the point. Nick tells us he's biased right away by saying he reserves judgment. That's him admitting he's gonna be unfair. Every judgment he makes after that, like hating Tom or feeling sorry for Gatsby, just proves he's a biased narrator. The whole book is filtered through his feelings. If he wasn't biased towards Gatsby, we wouldn't care about the story. His failed morals are just part of his bias.