ave been revealed without his thoughts about the comment to Gatsby. These thoughts come from the first-person point of view. A change also occurs in Nick’s feelings towards the Buchanans: They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made....” (180-81) It seems that Nick has passed a moral judgment on Gatsby and the Buchanans, completing the transformation from fence-sitter to resolute idealist. Fitzgerald would have had trouble expressing this change in Nick had the story been told from any other point of view. Transformation occurs again in the way that Nick portrays himself as the reserved observer. In his introduction to the novel, Nick states, “I’m inclined to reserve all judgments.” (1) Nick seems to accomplish this, for he relates events without emotion for most of the first part of the novel, Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchannan broke [Myrtle’s] nose with his open hand. Then there were bloody towels upon the floor, and women’s voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broken wail of pain....Then Mr. McKee turned and continued on out the door. Taking my hat from the chandelier, I followed. (37-38) Nick does not comment on the situation either during the event nor during the telling of it. Instead, he chooses to remove himself by leaving. Once again, however, Nick undergoes a change as the plot progresses. His comment to Gatsby, “I wouldn’t ask too much of her....you can’t repeat the past.” (111) indicates his newly found willingness to supply his opinion. More remarkable however, is the narrative where Nick is once again obviously giving his opinion at the novel’s conclusion, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by ...
