Watching is More Important than Listening

Fitzgerald signifies that watching is a better way to gain knowledge, about the reality of life and your surrounding, through the character owl eyes and the picture of T.J. Eckleburg.

He employs the motif that watching is more knowledgeable than talking because as readers we often have an epiphany while reading about any instance referring to owl eye of T.J. Eckleburg. This statement relates to the question, “Is Nick an omniscient and reliable narrator?” because though he often watched Gatsby and the other characters in the book, he becomes suspect to becoming overwhelmed by each situation and often takes sides and loses what the reality of life is. Nick, along with his friends, is often found believing that the world he lives in with Gatsby is reality, but we as readers see the dramatic irony in this statement because the money and careless attitude of the two place them in a world far from it.

It takes characters like owl eyes and T.J. Eckleburg to help Nick realize that he has succumbed to being apart of a world that is solely based on his feeling and the actions of others. For example, when Gatsby dies and no one shows up to his funeral, but his father, Nick and owl eyes. Owl eyes’s statement to Nick about how people could find “the driveway” when there were parties, but couldn’t when there was a funeral, opened Nick’s eyes to the fact that people in life don’t care about you, but what you can do for them. Owl eyes’ statements represent Daisy because she loved Gatsby when he was new and had money to treat her with, but left him when he became too needy.

These two characters also represent Emerson’s idea of an all seeing eyeball, transparent eyeball.T.J. Eckleburg is able to see everything that happens between Tom and Wilson at the Gas station; all the pathetic instances of deceit, guile, trickery, and even death. T.J. Eckleburg represents not just the transparent eyeball, but the rest of society and reality. All the characters in Nick’s life seem to be enthralled in only “seeing” what occurs in their life, and nothing else. They represent a fake society made up of money, and false hopes and dreams. The rest of the world, T.J. Eckleburg, and owl eyes, see this group of people and take what they do, with a grain of salt because it only affects that group of people and no the rest of the world.

All of the little events and actions that make up the motif that Fitzgerald is trying to get across, contribute into making the plotline of The Great Gatsby, bigger than life and like a fantasy that is unobtainable in society. His motif of watching is more important than talking speaks to the readers and all human beings. We often becomes so enthralled in our own live that we become self-centered, and unable to see where our live fin in reality. T.J. Eckleburg and owl eyes represent the transparent eyeball because they are basically fake and unreal. Eckleburg is a painting, and Owl eyes is only the transparent eyeball because of what he represents. Talking allows you to become a part of any fake reality because it brings you into a person’s, world, but watching allows you to stay on the outside of life looking in on all the lives of others who often live in face societies that drags them away from reality. The transparent eyeball is obtainable for any person because of we are as human beings. People need to have interactions with people, even Thoreau failed at living by himself in the woods while trying to separate himself from society. I take away that often reality is a fantasy and fantasy can never be a reality. Watching allows a glimpse at reality, but obtaining a perspective based on reality is impossible for anyone and everyone.