Whatever the precise meaning, Fitzgerald’s purpose is to deploy potentially contradictory statements and notions in a manner designed to make the reader distrustful of Nick’s narration and unsure of what precisely is being communicated by his words: the implication being that it is necessary to read between the lines of this novel if the ‘truth’ is to be discerned. What Gatsby ‘represented’ merits Nick’s scorn, but that leaves room for an essence or a core to the man that might fairly be described as great. The key to this little mystery is perhaps the word ‘represented’. The phase ‘I have an unaffected scorn,’ however, is in the present tense, and so must refer to Nick’s considered view as the ‘older and wiser’ narrator. Such an assertion could still be ironic, but as Nick has just stated that Gatsby ‘was exempt’ to his negative ‘reaction’ to the East Coast, it seems likely that his feelings about Gatsby remain positive, at the very least. According to Nick’s title, Gatsby is ‘Great’. His experience at West Egg has led to a solidly reactionary Middle-Western view: he wants ‘the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever.’Ĩ ‘back from the East’ – This refers literally, of course, to the East Coast of America, but there is also a faintly Romantic sense of oriental extravagance implied by ‘the East’ here.Ĩ ‘I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.’ – A sentence clearly designed to pique the reader’s interest.Ĩ ‘Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.’ – Fitzgerald’s layering is complex. 8 ‘the hard rock or the wet marshes’ – Nick’s image implies that, at root, the hierarchy of moral values is essentially ‘social’, in that it is fundamentally based upon a person’s background.
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