The Great Gatsby

Gatsby: pages 49-59

This section of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby mainly focuses on our narrator, Nick Carraway.  We learn of his inner feelings.  He seems like he lives such a lonely life, but the presence of Miss Jordan Baker seems to intrigue him.  I think it's more infatuation than affection that draws him to her though.  He even says "I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity" (Fitzgerald, 57).  I'm confused though at Carraway's statement that Baker is "incurably dishonest" (Fitzgerald, 58).  Does he mean that she is dishonest to herself and with her emotions?  She does seem to be the master of disguise when it comes to her true feelings; she is always putting on a haughty, careless face to mask what she is really thinking.  Or does Carraway mean that she is dishonest in the way she gossips about others?  He barely even knows this woman, how can he claim to have thought to be in love with her?! 

Fitzgerald supplies us with a seemingly pure and honest narrator.  This could be so that we will trust his statements and opinions throughout the novel, but it also serves to show how untrustworthy everyone else around Carraway seems to be.  Carraway even says that "I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known" (Fitzgerald, 59).  I think Fitzgerald is using an honest narrator to make us suspicious and cautious of every other character in the novel.