Gatsby Remains a Mystery

The Great Gastby
p. 120-132 (and a little bit after)

Though I have made significant process in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Mr. Jay Gatsby himself remains a mystery to the reader, mostly because he is clearly still a mystery to Nick. Nick, though he has gotten to know Gatsby, is still unsure of both his past and what to think of him in general. For example, Nick says, "I had one of those renewals of complete faith in him that I'd experienced before" (Fitzgerald, 129). At this point, you would think two close friends would no longer need "renewals of faith" in eachother; they should know eachother better than that. However, Nick still seems unsure. This uncertainty is portrayed again a few pages later when Nick says, "He looked...as if he had 'killed a man'" and "he begain to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been made" (Fitzgerald, 134). With the first quote, Nick is re-analyzing a prior accusation of Gatsby that he thought he had expelled. In the second, Nick almost describes Gatsby of over-explaining himself. These passages, for me, seem to paint a picture of uncertainty, once again, in regards to the real Gatsby. Will we ever know him?