application for Nick Carraway (The Great Gatsby)

[mid-west-egg.livejournal.com]

(( Aided, abetted, and egged on by Gatsby-mun, of course. ))

Later, Nick would suppose it might all have been inevitable. Some senseless and improbable fate had ordained that he, Nick Carraway of Chicago, should alone serve as clear-eyed witness and chronicler to the culmination of Jay Gatsby's fabulous life. Why not Gatsby's afterlife as well? he'd think, and shake his head.

Later, too, he'd think how unremarkable and ordinary his own initial reaction to Hogwarts must have been. Probably almost everyone sucked into the Sorting Room thought himself or herself to be dreaming. In Nick's case, the supposition was doubly apt, since the last thing he remembered was nodding off to sleep. He had finally bid farewell to the East. Sick of its confusion and hothouse excess, he had packed up what belongings of his own had taken up space in that eighty-dollar-a-month West Egg bungalow next door to Gatsby's mansion, and he had shipped them home ahead of himself. He had boarded a train and he was going home. He knew, now, where home was; where home had always been.

The train's noise and regular shuddering drew him into sleep, as trains will do. His frayed jaded subconscious mind threw up before him nothing new, only a succession of things he had seen before: people splashing in fountains, champagne spurting in a wasteful trajectory across the glittering moonlit lawn. When he awoke, he was no longer in his train seat, nestled into the comfortable hollow left by hundreds of travelers before him. He was in an armchair, in a high-ceilinged room of stone. His immediate association was not with castles of any kind, but with some old buildings at Yale.

Funny odd dreamlike questions were lobbed at him like shuttlecocks. Groggy and amiable, Nick batted them back.

( I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. )

"I have read the hogwarts_hocus faq, and understand it is a crazy, cracktastic sorting community and RPG. NC.
I have read the hogwarts_hocus rules and agree to abide by each and every one of them.NC.
I agree to be a good sport and not get my knickers in a bunch. NC.
One day, marmalade will rule the world. NC."