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 War I 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 his second cousin, once removed, Daisy Buchanan which becomes one of the novel's central conflicts. Carraway is easy-going and optimistic, although this latter quality fades as the novel progresses. After witnessing the callous indifference and hedonism of the idle rich during the riotous Jazz Age, he ultimately chooses to leave the eastern United States forever and returns to the Midwest.
Nick Carraway as portrayed by actor Neil Hamilton in The Great Gatsby (1926)
Scholars posit that Nick Carraway embodies the pastoral idealism of Fitzgerald who cherished the rustic simplicity of the American West.
Image: F Scott Fitzgerald 1921
Image: F. Scott Fitzgerald circa 1915
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.
The front dust jacket art of the first edition, known as Celestial Eyes
George Wilson and his wife Myrtle live in the "valley of ashes", a refuse dump (shown in the above photograph) historically located in New York City during the 1920s. Today, the area is Flushing Meadows–Corona Park.
The confrontation between Gatsby and Tom occurs in the twenty-story Plaza Hotel, a château-like edifice with an architectural style inspired by the French Renaissance.
Edith Cummings, a premier amateur golfer, inspired the character of Jordan Baker. A friend of Ginevra King, she was one of Chicago's famous debutantes in the Jazz Age.