Character Analysis Nick Whenever you feel like criticising any one, just remember that all the

e people in this world havent had the advantages that youve had. In consequence, Im inclined to reserve all judgements. I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express tem, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or wet marshes, but after a certain point I dont care what its founded on. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness. My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in the Middle Western city for three generations. we have a tradition that were descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfathers brother, who came here in fifty-one. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood. life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all. Almost any exhibition of self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me. I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon. I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment they were merely casual events in a crowded summer, and until much later, they absorbed me infinitely less than my personal affairs. I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in otherspoor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeplyI was casually sorry, then I forgot. I hate careless people. Thats why I like you. Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.