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.