ith Meyer Wolfsheim yet, he is contemptuous of Jordan Baker for cheating in a mere golf game. And though he says that he's prepared to forgive this sort of behavior in a woman: "It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame too deeply... I was casually sorry, and then I forgot," it seems that he cannot accept her for being "incurably dishonest", and then says that his one "cardinal virtue" is that he's "one of the few honest people" he has ever known. When it comes to women (or possible girlfriends) not only are they judged, they are measured up against his own virtues as well. To understand Nick's values one must know his origins.Nick leaves the Mid-West after he returns home from WWI, understandably restless and at odds with the traditional and conservative values that, from his account haven't changed in spite of the tumult of the war. It is this insularity from a changed world no longer structured by the values that had sent young men to war, that makes him decide to go East, to New York and learn about bonds. After a summer in the East, he decides to go back home to the security of what is familiar and traditional. He seeks a return to the safety of a place where houses we referred to by the names of families that had inhabited them for generations. By this stage, the East has become for him the "grotesque" origins of his nightmares.Don't we perhaps feel a little let down that Nick runs away from his experience in the East in much the same way that he has run away from that "tangle back home" to whom he writes letters and signs "with love", but doesn't really mean it? This is truly an ironic action on the part of Nick, who is still trying to establish his honesty. Is it unfair to want more from this narrator, to show some kind of development in his emotional make-up? His return home suggests a retreat from life and kind of emotional regression. There aren't very many emotions in The Great...
