re much influenced by their European experiences. They were as highly critical of American society as writers such as Mencken and Lewis, writers who stayed in America and who criticized from up close, but the European-influenced writers refrained from the same sort of direct assault.
Gatsby interacts with the people of West Egg, but his experiences are seen through the eyes of Nick Carraway and not through his own consciousness. This leaves Gatsby more mysterious as a character. In the early part of the novel, Fitzgerald uses uncertainty about Gatsby's background to create a sense of mystery, but once Gatsby's background is explained, the people of West Egg think they know him and can pigeonhole him. In truth, we never really know Gatsby the way we know a character whose consciousness we share. Nick Carraway is the character whose consciousness we do share in this novel, and from the first we must see him as a relatively objective observer. Carraway tries to make the reader feel that he is objective in the opening paragraphs when he notes that his fath
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