A Brief Psychoanalysis of Nick

After five chapters of being inside the head of the main character of Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, I'm still finding myself wondering: Who the heck is this guy? From the start we aren't told much about the man we follow around for the entirety of the book, in fact the lack of information I found almost refreshing. We're given a brief background, but besides that we have nothing to go on. Because of this, I've rendered it necessary to truly dig into the passages of this book and find out what kind of person Nick really is.

The first page contains Nick talking about his tendency to reserve judgement. It would appear that Nick is telling us about himself, but this opinion I believe is biased. Nick is in fact very judgmental, no matter how deserving one is to his judgment. To give an example, in the most recent chapter Gatsby is again and again portrayed as extremely awkward through the eyes of Nick. Another further back example, Tom is shown as abusive and perhaps even dim-witted through subtle wording which Nick gives to the reader.

So what does this mean if right from the beginning we're given questionable description of someone, given by themselves? Well perhaps this means that Nick is not fully honest with himself, and this raises a number of questions. Is Nick so dishonest that he portrayed characters in ways another who knows these people personally would disagree with? Is Nick so dishonest that he leaves out detailed he would rather not divulge, or emphasizes those that bolster his image? Is Nick a reliable narrator after all?