The character is a Yale University alumnus from the American Midwest, a World War I veteran, and a newly arrived resident of West Egg on Long Island, near New York City.

After witnessing the callous indifference and insouciant hedonism of the idle rich during the riotous Jazz Age, he ultimately chooses to leave the eastern United States forever and returns to the Midwest.

[2] Fitzgerald identifies the Midwest—those "towns beyond the Ohio"—with the perceived virtuousness and rustic simplicity of the American West and as culturally distinct from the decadent values of the eastern United States.

[2] Carraway's decision to leave the East evinces a tension between a complex pastoral ideal of a bygone America and the societal transformations caused by industrialization.

Actor Ned Wever originated the role of Nick on the stage when he starred in the 1926 Broadway adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City.

[13] In subsequent decades, the role has been played by many actors including Macdonald Carey, Lee Bowman, Rod Taylor, Sam Waterston, Paul Rudd, Bryan Dick, Tobey Maguire and others.

[20] Wilson ascribed to Fitzgerald the strengths and weaknesses typical of 1920s Midwesterners including a "sensitivity and eagerness for life without a sound base of culture and taste".

[49] After his graduation from Yale University in 1915 and the United States' entry into World War I in 1917, Nick served in the Ninth Machine-Gun Battalion of the 3rd Division.

[c][52][53] After the Allied Powers signed an armistice with Imperial Germany in 1918, a restless Nick moved from the Midwest to West Egg, a wealthy enclave on Long Island, to learn about the bond business.

[58] Soon after, Nick's wealthy neighbor Jay Gatsby invites him to one of his lavish soirées, replete with famous guests and hot jazz music.

[76] Weir argued that all of Fitzgerald's literary themes must be understood in the context of the conflict "leaving behind it a generation of sad young men, distrustful of ideas or of ideals, shunning any sort of generalization, 'cynical rather than revolutionary,' 'tired of Great Causes.

[78] In particular, Carraway reflects the Lost Generation's view of pre-war America as "not simply remote, but archaic, the repository of an innocence long since dead.

"[78] Steinbrink speculated that Carraway's journey eastward is "not simply to learn the bond business, but because his wartime experiences have left him restless in his midwestern hometown and because he wishes to make a clean break" from past traumas.

Although scholars such as Weir, Fussell, Steinbrink, and others attributed the disillusionment of young Americans and the advent of the Jazz Age to the carnage of World War I, Fitzgerald adamantly rejected such theories during his lifetime.

[71][72] Fitzgerald believed that the American generation that embodied the Jazz Age's hedonism wasn't the veterans but their younger peers who had been adolescents during the war.

Declaring that "the war had little or nothing to do" with the change in morals among young Americans or the emergence of the Jazz Age,[80][92] Fitzgerald attributed the sexual revolution among young Americans to a combination of popular literary works by H. G. Wells and other intellectuals criticizing repressive social norms, Sigmund Freud's sexual theories gaining salience, and the invention of the automobile allowing youths to escape parental surveillance in order to engage in premarital sex.

[94] He claimed that the excessive use of force by police against war veterans during the 1919 May Day Riots triggered a wave of cynicism among young Americans who questioned whether the United States was any better than despotic regimes in Europe.

"[97] Throughout the novel, Carraway identifies the Midwest—those "towns beyond the Ohio"—with the perceived virtuousness and rustic simplicity of the American West and as culturally distinct from the decadence of the eastern United States.

[99][100] Scholar Thomas Hanzo posits that Carraway must return "to the comparatively rigid morality of his ancestral West and to its embodiment in the manners of Western society.

He alone of all the Westerners can return, since the others have suffered, apparently beyond any conceivable redemption, a moral degeneration brought on by their meeting with that form of Eastern society which developed during the Twenties.

[102] I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all — Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, we're all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.

[3] Marx argues that Fitzgerald, via Nick Carraway, expresses a pastoral longing typical of other 1920s American writers like William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.

[4] Yet, as Fitzgerald's work shows, any technological demarcation between the eastern and western United States has long since vanished,[5] and one cannot escape into a pastoral past.

As early as 1945, literary critics such as Lionel Trilling noted that various characters in The Great Gatsby were intended by Fitzgerald to be "vaguely homosexual" and in 1960, writer Otto Friedrich commented upon the ease of examining Nick Carraway's thwarted relations through a queer lens.

[122] The first actor to portray Nick Carraway in any medium was 24-year-old Ned Wever who starred in the 1926 Broadway adaptation of Fitzgerald's novel at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City.

[124] The play ran for 112 performances and paused when its lead actor James Rennie, who portrayed Jay Gatsby, traveled to the United Kingdom to visit an ailing family member.

[124] As F. Scott Fitzgerald was vacationing in Europe at the time, he never saw the 1926 Broadway play,[124] but his agent Harold Ober sent him telegrams quoting the glowing reviews of the production.

"[140] Similarly, Gene Siskel noted "Waterston brings the proper mixture of halting action and determined thinking to his portrayal of Nick.

[143] According to Maguire, the decision to confine Nick in a sanitarium occurred during pre-production as a collaborative idea between himself, director Baz Luhrmann, and co-screenwriter Craig Pearce.

[143] Critic Jonathan Romney of The Independent opined that Tobey Maguire as Carraway was the least impressive of the cast,[144] and he lamented that Luhrmann's adaptation disappointingly painted the character as "a straw-hatted goof.