Jay Gatsby and Nick Carroway

Yes, actually I do think their relationship is pretty fraudulent. I bet it if weren't for Nick's connections to Daisy, Gatsby would never have gone out of his way to officially invite Nick over to one his extravagant parties. After all, the whole purpose of his everyone-is-welcome parties are in hope of seeing Daisy among the unfamiliar crowd. He tries so hard to make Nick comfortable around him and like him so that he'd do him that favor of inviting Daisy over for tea too.....it just seems like the kind of effort you'd put into someone you aren't very close to, to put up a good image. With others like friends and family, usually people are much more relaxed and unguarded around them. (At least that's the case with me.) The fact that Gatsby constantly calls Nick "old sport" makes it even more like he's really trying hard to create maybe even a temporary "relationship" to use his relations for his own benefit. Now that I think about it, Nick is always calling him Gatsby in the book, years after they'd known each other. They aren't very far apart in age, so it's not that much of a respect issue. That might actually be the reason why I keep calling him Gatsby myself. At first when I heard the topic of the week, I had no idea who Jay was for the longest time. Anyway that's that.