The Character's Perspective: Indirect Discourse

Garrett, George. "Fire and Freshness: A Matter of Style in The Great Gatsby." New Essays on The Great Gatsby. (1985): 101-15. Print.

The criticism examined Fitzgerald writing style and Nick Carraway, the narrator. The narration became increasingly complex as the novel progressed. There were many times throughout the novel where the audience received first person narration from the characters. The readers also were able to learn of Gatsby life story through indirect discourse. Then the novel uses third person narration to explain more of the issues that are in the novel. A form of indirect discourse was used to describe Myrtle's death. Carraway uses a third person omniscient with brief sensory perceptions from Michaelis and George Wilson. Carraway also uses this extreme narrative style and imagines the direct dialogues from Gatsby's death. Garrett believes Fitzgerald uses this to establish a powerful sense of unity that tends to camoflouge the variety and complexity of the narration. He believes this novel to be a pioneering novel based on Fitzgerald's style he uses.

This critic examines the different styles Fitzgerald used throughout his novel. He gives it credit as being one of the first novels, the starting point, of this kind. Garrett talked about the stages Nick went through when describing events throughout the story. He notices the switch from first person to third person and uses the technique of indirect discourse. This techniques alllows the narrator to tell another character's story or point of view through the character's persepective. This technique is very beneficial for a reader. It is very responsible of a narrator to tell a character's story in that character's perspective. This fact considers Nick a honest narrator. It shines light on ethical reading in that the readers are not receiving information about events in the story that are biased and that the narrator has been able to put their sense into the facts. Even though Nick switches his narrative style around it dismisses the fact that it is unethical. The readers are actually benefiting from his switch in narration because they are able to draw conclusions from all of the character's point of view. This criticism shows that Fitzgerald provied a character that might come off as unethical but because of the narrator's techniques he was able to deliver a trustworth novel for ethical reading.