Rhetorical Analysis- The Great Gatsby Although Gatsby would be considered the main character, the story is told through Nick's eyes. Plain, boring, analytical, safe Nick. I think the purpose of that is to show the characters and the story through the least judgmental eyes in the book. Nothing every really happened to Nick. He never lost someone he loved and valued so deeply, he never felt oppressed or glorified or even noticed. Nick was the most sensible of them all, besides maybe Jordan. He wasn't vain or cruel or haughty. He was an honest man, who happened to be in the middle of a whirlwind story. Despite Nick being the fly on the wall, we usually can't tell what's happening or what's going to happen based on his own judgments, primarily because he almost never has one. However, the way the other characters treat and interact with Nick can give you more clues than anything else. If something horrible has happened, the way they treat Nick will give you a hint of what happened before its explained in the book. For the most part, Nick isn't very prevalent, other than the fact that every other character seems to trust him enough to fill him in on the latest detail of their lives, thus giving us multiple POV's and the ability to completely piece together the story with little effort. F. Scott Fitzgerald seems to have a preference for extended metaphors and figurative language throughout the book, making what one would think of as boring run-on sentences into beautiful pictures, painting the entire scene with a few sentences. He has a way of manipulating words to shape whatever he wants, making the story much more interesting.