Final answer:
Nick Carraway's timely revelation of Jay Gatsby's true past in 'The Great Gatsby' clarifies misconceptions and emphasizes the uniqueness of Gatsby's story, reflecting Fitzgerald's narrative intent to present individual and universal human experiences.
Step-by-step explanation:
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, narrator Nick Carraway's decision to provide the biography of James Gatz, who later reinvents himself as Jay Gatsby, is crucial for clearing up misconceptions surrounding Gatsby's persona. Nick feels it is important to provide this biography at a strategic point in the narrative to clarify Gatsby's character and motivations beyond the swirling rumors and to anchor the reader's understanding in a more complex reality rather than the facades prevalent in the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald's use of Nick to relay Gatsby's story underscores the idea that his characters, while great in their own right, represent individual stories that resonate on a universal level, rather than embodying grand narratives or stereotypes of their time.
Fitzgerald portrays his most famous character through the eyes of a single, flawed narrator to emphasize the notion that we are not meant to know all of Gatsby's secrets. The selective revelation of Gatsby's past and the timing of its disclosure serves to emphasize the individuality of Gatsby's experience while making it a timeless tale of ambition, love, and disillusionment that echoes the greater human experience. This also mirrors the experiences of individuals like Stalin, whose biographies are often distorted by myth-making, as well as deromanticizes the notoriety of certain professions during the 1920s, much like Fitzgerald reflects on his own life and craft in his essay "The Crack-Up".