Jordan

Jordan is the nickname of the novel’s narrator and protagonist who is revealed in the final line of the novel to really be named Casey. She is as a character who repeatedly steps away from her own identity and allows the desires and trajectories of others to determine the shape of her life. One of the earliest signs of this is her adoption of the nickname Jordan. The name is given to her by Sam and Yash, taken from the character in The Great Gatsby, and it replaces her given name, Casey. The shift signals the beginning of a pattern in which she loosens her connection to her own sense of self and accepts an identity generated through the perceptions of others. Rather than resisting this renaming, she embraces it, folding herself into the world that Sam and Yash create around her.

This inclination to merge with...