The narrator Nick Carraway is arguably the most interesting aspect of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, though it is regularly studied for its themes of class, wealth, and the American Dream. We readers depend upon Nick to inform us about the gaudy lives of the Buchanan’s and Gatsby, but just how trustworthy is he? Does his point of view distort the novel’s reality, and how? Nick establishes himself as a detached and true observer right from the start. He presumes to provide an objective report when he indicates, “I’m inclined to reserve all judgments” (Fitzgerald, 1). Yet it is apparent throughout the novel that Nick is less detached than he seems. His love for Gatsby taints his report, and his dislike of Tom and Daisy Buchanan causes him to present a slanted account. Tom is depicted as cruel and dishonest, and Gatsby is romanticized as an idealist; yet both men are seriously flawed. Nick’s retelling of Gatsby’s story is where his bias is strongest. He romanticizes Gatsby’s past and goals, rationalizing his own criminality and infatuation with Daisy as aspects of a grand, tragic fantasy. “They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness,” he writes, deploring the Buchanan’s’ extravagance (Fitzgerald, 179). This sentence is literally true, yet it’s also reflective of the way Nick’s ethical assumptions inform his text. Nick’s selectivity in narrating is also a feature of his dishonesty. As he habitually keeps things back and speaks as positively about himself as possible, he does own up to being “one of the few honest people” he has ever met (Fitzgerald, 59). He downplays his involvement in Gatsby’s criminality, hardly mentions anything concerning his own life, and withholds facts that could invalidate his account of what has transpired. His last description of Gatsby as a noble, lonely man is far removed from the fact that Gatsby made his money in different means and used people to get what he wanted. Nick is the only defender of Gatsby by the end of the novel, but we need to wonder if he is really an objective narrator or if he has invented a story to fulfill his own disillusionment. He recounts a narrative that is as much Gatsby’s as his own, where both he spurns the decay of the East and undergoes his own disillusionment. Finally, The Great Gatsby is both commentary on storytelling in general and satire of the American Dream. Our perception of the world and its inhabitants is filtered through Nick’s vision, and we cannot help but ask how much of what we are reading is reality and how much is his very carefully built-up reality.