The American classic, The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald, uses point of view to manipulate and shape the reader's response to the ideas embodied by the characters and events. The events of the novel are remembered and filtered through the consciousness of its peripheral narrator, Nick Carraway, a young Yale graduate. The Great Gatsby is about Jay Gatsby, a poor man who cannot overcome Daisy's rejection and how he dedicates his life to changing the past, acquiring wealth and status. The novel's point of view is a critical narrative technique; this is told through Carraway's first-person retrospective narration. The reader can accept the narrator's authenticity and reliability as he is constructed as a moralistic and entirely sympathetic character from the beginning of the novel. However, Carraway need not be subjective to be reliable. Through the narrator, Fitzgerald invites the reader to condemn the end of morality in American society during the Roaring Twenties. The ideas represented by the novel include the differences between social classes, the failure of the American dream, and the spirit of the 1920s. The point of view from which this story is told is crucial to how the reader responds to the ideas represented by the characters and events. Class dichotomy is an important issue in the novel and is shaped by Nick Carraway's descriptive narrative and is also manipulated by his own characterization and participation in the plot. Carraway's representation and subjective opinion of class are influenced by the fact that he comes from wealthy backgrounds. This is established early in the novel when he speaks of his family as "wealthy and important people" and also acknowledged himself as "... middle of paper ...... of the 1920s were doomed to failure in the way they cultivated relationships between people. This is perhaps the author predicting the collapse of the economy. This is shown as Nick reflects on the general selfishness and greed of people. The reader can also agree that this is true for the most part today, the endless parties and debauchery have a destructive nature. Americans have achieved success in their corrupt materialism. The Great Gatsby is told entirely through the eyes of Nick Carraway; perception shape and color the story. Nick is a fairly reliable but decidedly insightful narrator. Readers are inclined to believe Nick's recollection of events because of the promise of credibility he makes at the beginning of the novel, a factor that contributes to the way in which he tells the story. which readers respond to because they are more likely to respond to ideas in the way Fitzgerald intended.