This reading of the novel focuses mostly on Gatsby. What if we focus on Nick Carraway instead? Then what does the novel show us? Carraway is a fairly young man — not quite middle-aged, just turning 30. He’s from Chicago and seems to come from a comfortable, middle class, but not wealthy, family. He moves to New York so he can get into the Big Time: the potentially lucrative business of trading stocks and bonds. More or less by accident he becomes friends with the fabulously wealthy Gatsby. From this point on, Carraway learns a lot of rather depressing things: that Daisy is shallow and unhappy in her marriage; that Tom is a racist, bigoted hypocrite who cheats on his wife and beats up his mistress; and that Gatsby is an out-and-out criminal who makes his money by working as an accomplice with the mobster Meyer Wolfsheim to sell counterfeit bonds.* By the end of the novel, Carraway says that while he still sees something noble in Gatsby’s love for Daisy, he thinks the whole crowd is totally rotten.

So, if we keep the focus on Nick Carraway, what do you think The Great Gatsby is saying to us?