—> (acroche je suppose) Family has always been an important subject.

Indeed, in a lot of
novels, the relationship between family members often takes a huge place inside a
storyline…

today's essay is on the novel The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald and was published in
1925. The main themes in the novel are love, the american dream and it’s decline in the
roaring twenties. The excerpt that we will study is at the very begining of the novel. we have
a first person narrator which is Nick Carraway that introduce the story by a narrated passage
about himself and more precisely about how he is as a person but also his background.

PB How the author manages to establish themes of ambition and illusions of the American
dream using Nick retrospection ?

dev :
II - In this extract Nick Carraway reflects on himself and his life until now. Through that
reflection we can see how he implies some significant themes like ambition or the american
dream not only for the setting of the story but the whole novel. he says “i wanted the world
to be uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; i wanted no more riotous
excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.” Here it shows his ambition.
we know Nick is a tolerant man and refrain from judging people but questions his
environement and he had seen enough of humans and even like that he says that Gatsby is
different of all he has seen. he also says that Gatsby is ambitious too because he has
“some heighten sensitivity to the promises of life” and even make a comparaison
between gatsby and a seismograph just like he is one step ahead of everyone and knows
when to take the right opportunities. it is also a foreshadowing of the future events of the
novel. Nick will pretty much stay all along the story at Gatsby’s side from what we have here
and even if Gatsby in a certain manner embodies everything that Nick despises he finds him
very unique and intriguing. And being slightly familiar with the character of Gatsby we know
that he is living the american dream or it’s illusion i’d say. he will pursue his dream util the
end and that is what Nick is interested in. “what foul dust floated in the wake of his
dream that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short
winded elation of men.”
Before we go further i will define the american dream, it is the idea that no matter who you
are and ethnicities or social class you come from if you work hard enough you will have
everything you want and you wish for. it comes with a notion of finding oneself, hapiness and
freedom. it is the idea of self made man or rags to richies. an we can say illusion of the
american dream because from an external and superficial point of view Gatsby reached the
american dream but looking closer it is only an illusion of it because of materialism, his true
social class and more.
Nick is from a wealthy family and isn’t a new rich since he is a descendant of dukes of
Buccleuch. we know he participated to the great war and when he came back he couldn’t
stay in the middle west. “instead of being the warm center of the world, the middle west
now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe – so i decided to go East” “i came
east, permanently, i thought, in the spring of twenty-two” The east is a theme that
seems to be significant seeing how much it occurs. and here the fact that Nick decides to go
from the middle west to the east to learn the bond business. The word permanently conveys
a sense of determination and ambition, it symbolises a starting journey form him and it
comes back to ambition since he moves there to learn a work so he looks forward to
success too. And throughout he seems to talk a lot of his location just like if he needed
change or that the east has a unique appeal to him because of his curious nature.

nick apparait comme assez neutre

I- how can an advice change somebody?

To begin with, the studied scene opens with the main character reminding himself of
souvenirs with his father. He mentions one his advise that got stuck in his mind ever since :
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the
people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had”.
Thanks to the following lines we can understand that this advice helped him to become the
person he is now. indeed, he then analyzes his own interaction with other

● sort of omnivision of his life → he is like the author of his story

● “In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened
up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few
veteran bores.”

He sees himself as super tolerant because he keeps his judgment to him and he mentions a
“gatsby” and for him, he is like his enemy because he is nothing like him but he also sort of
admires him

“Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction
— Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.”

“No — Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul
dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the
abortive sorrows and short winded elations of men.”

Then, Nick gives us more details about his family… he comes from a wealthy family since
the brother of his grandfather but he never met him (he looks like his grandfather’s bro
because he saw a pic of him in his father’s office )

in 1915 he got his certificates,

then he went to the war and enjoyed it.
then he moved to nyc and decided to work in the bond business because everyone he knew
also worked there
then he asked for his father to support him financially for a year (he agreed)
finally he moved in the East forever at spring 1922.

Conclusion :
in conclusion, throught Nick introspection the themes of ambition and the appeal of the east
that shows us from the very beginning that the american dream has a major importance in
the novel. This extract isn’t just an introduction to the book but is essential to understand it’s
content and says a lot already.