Reality and illusion in The Great Gatsby The disparity between illusion and reality plays a very important role in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and in one scene in particular, where narrator Nick Carraway leaves an evening hosted by two acquaintances, Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson (Fitzgerald 41-42), works primarily to explore this issue. Offering a startling insight into this disparity, the scene embodies Fitzgerald's constant struggle to discern between the flashy, glittering image of American society in the 1920s and the reality of the hollowness and insincerity that this image struggles to mask. Perhaps one of America's best-known illusionists. , alcohol plays an important role in this scene, blurring the line between illusion and reality for both the reader and the characters involved. Carraway in particular has clearly crossed the line of sobriety, admitting just a few pages earlier that he has been "drunk only twice in [his] life and [that] the second time was that afternoon" (33). The fact is that this is supposedly the first time during his narrative that Carraw...