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Nick Carraway is a fictional character and narrator in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. The character is a Yale University alumnus from the American Midwest, a World War I veteran, and a newly arrived resident of West Egg on Long Island, near New York City. He is a bond salesman and the neighbor of enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby. He facilitates a sexual affair between Gatsby and his second cousin, once removed, Daisy Buchanan which becomes one of the novel's central conflicts. Carraway is easy-going and optimistic, although this latter quality fades as the novel progresses. After witnessing the callous indifference and hedonism of the idle rich during the riotous Jazz Age, he ultimately chooses to leave the eastern United States forever and returns to the Midwest. The character of Nick Carraway has been analyzed by scholars for nearly a century and has given rise to a number of critical interpretations. According to scholarly consensus, Carraway embodies the pastoral idealism of Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald identifies the Midwest—those "towns beyond the Ohio"—with the perceived virtuousness and rustic simplicity of the American West and as culturally distinct from the decadent values of the eastern United States. Carraway's decision to leave the East evinces a tension between a complex pastoral ideal of a bygone America and the societal transformations caused by industrialization. In this context, Nick's repudiation of the East represents a futile attempt to withdraw into nature. Yet, as Fitzgerald's work shows, any technological demarcation between the eastern and western United States has vanished, and one cannot escape into a pastoral past. Since the 1970s, scholarship has often focused on Carraway's sexuality. In one instance in the novel, Carraway departs an orgy with a feminine man and—following suggestive ellipses—next finds himself standing beside a bed while the man sits between the sheets clad only in his underwear. Such passages have led scholars to describe Nick as possessing a queerness and prompted analyses about his attachment to Gatsby. For these reasons, the novel has been described as an exploration of sexual identity during a historical era typified by the societal transition towards modernity. The character has appeared in various media related to the novel, including stage plays, radio shows, television episodes, and feature films. Actor Ned Wever originated the role of Nick on the stage when he starred in the 1926 Broadway adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City. That same year, screen actor Neil Hamilton played the role in the now lost 1926 silent film adaptation. In subsequent decades, the role has been played by many actors including Macdonald Carey, Lee Bowman, Rod Taylor, Sam Waterston, Paul Rudd, Bryan Dick, Tobey Maguire and others. Inspiration for the character Fitzgerald based the character of Nick Carraway largely upon himself. The author was a young Midwesterner from Minnesota. Like Carraway who went to Yale, Fitzgerald attended Princeton, an Ivy League school. Whereas Nick's father owns a hardware store, Fitzgerald's father owned a furniture store in Minnesota until 1898. Many scholars, including Fitzgerald's close friend Edmund Wilson, posit that Fitzgerald created the character of Nick as an ideal version of himself. His "characters—and himself—are actors in an elfin harlequinade". Nick's Midwestern viewpoint reflects Fitzgerald's experience. According to his friend Edmund Wilson, Fitzgerald was "as much of the Middle West of large cities and country clubs" as fellow writer Sinclair Lewis was "of the Middle West of the prairies and little towns". Wilson ascribed to Fitzgerald many of the strengths and weaknesses typical of 1920s Midwesterners including a "sensitivity and eagerness for life without a sound base of culture and taste". Wilson posited that Fitzgerald's Midwestern identity informed much of Carraway's perceptions; in particular, when Fitzgerald "approaches the East, he brings to it the standards of the wealthy West—the preoccupation with display, the love of magnificence and jazz, the vigorous social atmosphere of amiable flappers and youths comparatively unpoisoned as yet by the snobbery of the East". When creating the literary character of Carraway, Fitzgerald originally named the character Dud. In earlier drafts of the novel, the character had a previous romance with Daisy Buchanan prior to their reunion on Long Island. Fitzgerald's later rewrites excised any romantic past between Nick and Daisy, as well as added and then deleted a passage implying that Nick departed a job after a male acquaintance amorously pursued him. He also changed the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator to Nick's subjective perspective. These alterations introduced considerable ambiguity regarding both Nick's reliability as a narrator and his sexuality which became the focus of later scholarship. The ambiguity of Nick's sexuality reflects a similar ambiguity regarding Fitzgerald's own sexuality. During his lifetime, Fitzgerald's sexuality became a subject of debate among his friends and acquaintances. As a youth, Fitzgerald had a close relationship with Father Sigourney Fay, a possibly gay Catholic priest, and Fitzgerald later used his last name for the idealized romantic character of Daisy Fay. After college, Fitzgerald cross-dressed during outings in Minnesota, and he flirted with other men at social events. Years later, while drafting The Great Gatsby, rumors dogged Fitzgerald among the American expat community in Paris that he was gay. Soon after, Fitzgerald's wife Zelda Sayre likewise doubted his heterosexuality and asserted that he was a closeted homosexual. She belittled him with homophobic slurs, and she alleged that Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway engaged in sexual relations. These incidents strained the Fitzgeralds' marriage at the time of the novel's publication. Although Fitzgerald's sexuality remains a subject of scholarly debate, such biographical details lent credence to interpretations by literary scholars that his fictional characters such as Nick Carraway, Jordan Baker and others are either gay or bisexual surrogates. Scholars have particularly focused on Fitzgerald's statement in a 1935 letter to acquaintance Laura Guthrie that his mind was "half feminine". Although born "masculine," Fitzgerald nonetheless stated that he was "half feminine—at least my mind is... Even my feminine characters are feminine Scott Fitzgeralds." Fictional character biography In his narration, Nick Carraway explains that he was born in the Midwestern United States, a region which he describes as "the ragged edge of the universe". The Carraway family owned a hardware business since 1851 and have been a prominent, well-to-do family for generations. Due to his privileged upbringing, Carraway's father cautioned him against passing judgment on individuals who did not enjoy the same advantages. .... Discover the F Scott Fitzgerald Wesley Morris popular books. Find the top 100 most popular F Scott Fitzgerald Wesley Morris books.