Nick's Omniscient

Neuhaus, Ron. "Gatsby and the Failure of the Omniscient "I"." Modern Critical Interpretations: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. (1986): 45-55. Print.

In Ron Neuhaus criticism of The Great Gatsby he believed that the work of Fitzgerald to be flawed and stated that Fitzgerald had acknowledged his work to be flawed. The novel switches back and forth from first person narration to third person narration. Many critics believed this to not be ethical to switch back and forth. Neuhaus points out the fact that Fitzgerald transforms Nick into an omniscient narrator through diction, flashback, and reconstructed events in the novel. Neuhaus questioned Fitzgerald’s technique and did not believe that this was responsible of Fitzgerald. There were letters that Fitzgerald wrote to answer critics’ questions about The Great Gatsby and its reliability of being ethical. Fitzgerald stated that he felt that first person narration was not enough for his “credibility of his moral stance”. That is he couldn’t get his moral across to his audience without having Nick act as an omniscient character and a first person narrator. Fitzgerald believed in order to maintain a moral perspective and credibility; he needed to use the different styles of narration. Neuhaus states that Fitzgerald wants the audience to see the judgments of a narrative voice as that of a trustworthy narrator. Neuhaus points out in his criticism that in chapter eight the narration is told through Nick, Daisy, and Gatsby’s mind. He questions why Fitzgerald can be allow Nick to be omniscient in some scenes of the novel but doesn’t allow for this in other parts of the novel where the reader might benefit with more details. The example uses is the scenes between Gatsby and Daisy. Neuhaus believes that Fitzgerald used this technique so the audience would use serious consideration into the “romanticized figure” in the plot.

I selected this criticism because it gives us insight as to why Fitzgerald justified the narrative style of Nick Carraway. Many readers question Nick as to whether he is an unbiased narrator. Fitzgerald seemed to want to get a moral point across and to do so he had to violate Nick’s honesty as a narrator. Fitzgerald wanted his audience to be aware of certain scenes in the novel but it wouldn’t be achievable without changing Nick’s narrative style, going from first person accounts to omniscient accounts. With the switching of Nick’s narrative style it makes the readers question the ethics of The Great Gatsby. The readers have to wonder how Nick knows the information that he does when Nick gives detailed scenes to his readers. Is it unethical to the readers to allow Nick the knowledge of events that he wasn’t there to experience? The criticism by Ron Neuhaus addresses the question as to why Fitzgerald creates Nick to switch back and forth. Fitzgerald wants the audience to get as unbiased facts as Nick can provide but also be able to understand the relationships in the novel. Fitzgerald can not point out the self destruction of the characters without Nick being “all knowing”. Fitzgerald needed to achieve credibility with his audience and wanted his audience to understand his moral perspective. Fitzgerald took a chance with using this craft because switching Nick’s narrative style put the ability of the reader in jeopardy of dismissing the novel as ethically unreliable. This criticism doesn’t answer whether or not the reader’s were affected by Fitzgerald’s switch in narration. The audience is now aware of his reasons for the switch in narration.