The Great Gatsby Chapter 1

The Great Gatsby is written in the first person, from the point of view of Nick Carraway. Nick starts the story by telling the audience of a peice of advice his father gave to him in his youth, not to judge or criticise anyone as they have not had the advantages Nick himself has had. Nick says he has taken this advice to heart, and says he now reserves all judgement on other people, when their moral standards do not match up to Nick's own, which he protrays as being very high. He portrays himself as being very tolerant and non-judgemental, but his determination to not judge has caused him to avoid intimate revelations from other people, so he will not be tempted to judge them for their most secret actions. As such it seems Nick was perhaps a bit of a loner at college and in his early life, as he did not want to form an intimate bond with another person for fear of being judgemental. It is important to start the novel with his passage, as it sets up Nick's shy and unitimate personality, and explains his often aloof nature and the reasoning behind it. Despite preaching tolerance Nick appears to perhaps to have let snobbishness in, as he "snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth." While he is tolerant of people with less manners and lower morals due to their poorer background he is also suggesting that people of a lower class than himself can't be of the same moral standard as someone of a higher birth, and is making excuses for some peoples behaviour when all that is to blame for their own malovolence is their own actions, and not the opportunities presented at birth. However Nick recognises the limits of this view, and says that good manners can be founded on hard rock or wet marshes and it doesn't matter where the person has come from, they are still capable of high morals. He said that when he came back from the East he wanted the world to be at a moral attention forever. While this revelas Nick is writing about his experiences in New York the previous summer and autumn, it also revelas that perhaps while in the east Nick experienced some moral shortcomings, and now wishes that despite his earlier views about opportunities at birth, everyone in the world had the same high morals as himself. Nick introduces Gatsby, the titular character, and say that Gatsby was somehow different from anyone else. Despite promising to be non-judgemental Carraway says Gatsby represents everything for which Nick has "unaffected scorn."

First Opinions on Nick Carraway

Nick Carraway seems to be quite wealthy and upper class, as he is descended from some old scottish dukes, he attended Yale University (only the richest can afford to go) and his father can afford to fund his first year living in New York. He seems to be a restless person, and one who wants to both reform and rebel. He wants to move away from his home town, and not take on the hardware business that has been in his family for three generations, however he choses the bond business because as he says, everyone he knows is in the bond business. He claims this is a move based on reality, he thinks that the bond business is a flourishing business and he can be financially stable from it, but perhaps he has been swayed by bother sharesmen.

He says that he has taken some of his father's advice very seriously, and as such judges no man, no matter what they do, based on the fact they are from a more disadvantaged background. This seems to be a good quality, but he goes on to say that fundamental decencies are parcelled out unequally at birth, he admits this is a snobbish thing to say, because though he accepts lower class people when they do not act in the way he is expected too, neither does he give them a chance to act above the label given to them by soceity. Carraway claims he has always tried to get out of situations when someone is about to reveal an intimate issue, as he wishes not to judge them for what they have done, but this lack of social contact has probably made him a socially awkward and certainly a reserved individual, believing that people should keep their problems to themselves, and outward expressions of emotion should be limited.

Two Hands

The poem two hands is written in a fairly formal style, there is no use of slang or colloqualism. The poem is written in one long stanza, with a heavy use of ejampment. It is a free verse poem, as it doesn't seem to conform to any recognised poetry style. It is written in the first person, from the point of view of the poet himself, speaking about his own life and profession and father. There is a subtle ryhme scheme, the second and third lines ryhme, then there are two non rhyming lines, then a rhyming couplet, then two non-rhyming lines, then another rhyming couplet etc until you get the last line which is non-rhyming, just like the first line. These lines are desgined to stand away from the poem, as the beginning and end. The poem's enjampment has been carefully set out to adhere to this unusual rhyme scheme, which isn't obvious to a listener of the poem.
There is a heavy use of personification in the poem, as the two hands mentioned in the poem are metaphors for the poet and his father. The poem is about the contrasting careers of the two men, so the poem title "Two hands" is good as it represents the two different men, about which this poem is about. The first piece of personification is when the pencil in his fathers hand is described as "nodding stiffly." This creates an image of his father tapping his medical journal with a pencil at certain sentences, like some people do when reading (though we only learn later he is reading a medical journey) but the word stiffly suggests fatigue and tiredness, and when we learn this man has performed thirteen operations that day, we understand why the word stiffly is used, as his fathers hand is exhausted. The same hands is described as "leading the scalpel an intricate dance." Scalpels don't really dance, but is is another use of personification and creates an image of the quickness of movement of the scalpel, and the different moves it must make during an operation, controlled by the fathers hand. The phone is described as having "sobbed itself to sleep." This personification creates the image of the phone ringing and ringing, and being ignored by the father, has eventually become silent. The word sobbing makes the phones ring sound loud and desperate, and perhaps the incoming calls are to summon the father to another operation. He has chosen to ignore the call as he "has articles to read." The poet is at the other end of the house, listening to the phone calls, and he begins to curse his own hand (the hand represents himself and his own talents.) He blames the hands indescisions, but he means his own indecisiveness. He describes his fingers as having "some style on paper, elsewhere none" This imagery is referring to his own talents, he is a talented writer and poet, but has little other talent. He describes the two hands as being similar in appearance, but completely different in what they do. The hands represent the two men as a whole, so the two men probably look very similar, and may even have some similarites in personality, but the men have completely different talents and different jobs, Jon Stallworthy is a poet, while his father is a surgeon. Stalworthy is jealous of his father's profession, and uses the hands metaphor to describe how he writes all day, saving no-one's life, not really helping anyone, while his father saves many people's lives everyday, and is really having a positive impact on society. The poet feels useless and feels like his poems are completely pointless compared to the important work his father does. Stallworthy Junior feels he is in the shadow of his better and more talented father. He again uses the word dance as personification, but to describe his own hand writing with a pencil. He describes his fathers hand as fast, while his as slow, this contrast enforcing an unfavourable comparison, making himself sound like a bit of a lazy bum while his father is the superhuman lifesaver. The tone is that the poet is jealous of his father, and feels useless in his current profession