He learn that Nick comes from a rather well off or wealthy Midwestern family, who's patriarch arrived in the United States in 1851. Nick attended Yale, which shows some degree of family wealth or status. He moves east to New York after serving with the American Forces during the first World War, planning to begin his career in the "bond" business. Nick sees him self as a well rounded man or "jack of all trades" as some would argue, and holds a good amount of ingenuity, common sense, and experience in life, as opposed to other characters in the novel who've experienced nothing but glorious, excessive wealth their entire lives. Nick evolves quite a bit from beginning to end during the course of this novel; he begins as an ambitious Midwestern man who is no longer interested in seeing the small lonely world of his home after having seen the "outside" world during the war, and looking to enter a society that he believes is powerful, wealthy, and utopian to some degree. By the end of the story, Nick has had enough of his dream society's corrupt and savage nature, and moves back home, leaving all his connections to power and wealth behind, for old-fashion values and morals (and perhaps simplicity) back home. After having read the novel it becomes very apparent that while Nick holds tremendous involvement in the story, his character is always kept rather subliminal, as if he is an invisible entity observing the story from above. Fitzgerald places our narrator exceptionally well to not only take part in the story but also give the themes and overall mood of the story the essence that make this novel one of the greatest pieces in American literature.
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