What I Think

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has had worldwide acclaim for a little less than a century and has been admired by those everywhere. My opinion of the book, however, is a particularly negative one compared to those of the general public.

            While I was reading this novel, I discovered that I dislike many things about it. The characters themselves were not loveable in their strange behaviors. The fallout of the seemingly blooming relationship between Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker especially disappointed me. I assumed that the author would make their partnership flourish since he virtually ruined the marriages of the Wilson couple and Buchanan family. Unfortunately, the author decided to make the narrator (Nick) lightly rude to his prospective lover. This created unwanted awkward tension and butchered any chance of the couple getting back together again. I was also dismayed by Daisy Buchanan’s personality, whose ambiguous romantic love choices disturbingly reminded me of the dull character, Bella Swan, in the book Twilight. While some readers may argue that without Daisy’s flighty attitude towards love there would have been no plot, I feel that the author could have found some way around this obstacle and have made a sufficient conclusion. Also, I felt unattached to the book when Nick would continuously attend parties where there was simply gossip taking place and because of this the plot line remained dull throughout the novel. I believe that The Great Gatsby would have benefitted from a minor alien invasion during one of the slightly mind-numbing sections of the book. It would have alleviated the stress of New York’s social scene and brought the public of affluence to its knees. The pettiness of the wealthy society angered me and I wish there could have been someway to make the people realize that life is not all about money (like an alien invasion).

            I would not suggest this novel to any of my friends or acquaintances. I feel that the book did not give me enough powerful insight to the world, like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye. Although there was plenty of syntax, diction, and other rhetorical strategies, these things did not have an important impact on me.

Daisy Buchanan to Lucy Manette

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald reiterates many of the thematic concepts created in the historical fiction A Tale of Two Cities written by acclaimed English author Charles Dickens. Some of these similarities are between Daisy Buchanan and Lucy Manette. Both of these girls are admired by the men in the novels for their specific physical characteristics—Lucy’s favored feature being her “forehead”, which is “strikingly expressive” (Dickens 75), and Daisy’s “thrilling voice” and “charming little laugh” (Fitzgerald 9). Along with these components of their physicality, they each are described as having a golden tint of some sort; Daisy is called “the golden girl” by Nick Carraway (Fitzgerald 120), and Lucy has “golden hair which she [wears] in long curls” (Dickens 52). Likewise, Lucy and Daisy have luminescent characteristics in their stature. Lucy’s “radiant hair” appears to be the “light of Freedom” (Dickens 54), which dignifies her bright personality much like the “sunshine” that falls “with romantic affection upon [Daisy’s] glowing face” (Fitzgerald 14). The light and happy diction used to describe the two women demonstrates the authors’ ingenious illustration of the inspiration for the heroes in the novels. Dickens and Fitzgerald establish these characters as ingénues, stereotypically innocent and powerless characters that are important to literature because they create a scenario for the romantic leads (Sydney Carton and Jay Gatsby) to assist them in any way that could possibly lead the men to their own demise. Both Gatsby and Carton, unsurprisingly, die to defend the fates of their loved ones.

The Syntactical Sentiments of Nicholas

Throughout the historical fiction The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts the appropriate sentiments of the narrator (Nick Carraway) in different settings of the plot. At certain moments, the character is in awe of the extravagance of wealth in the mansions in the countryside of New York, the awkwardness that takes place during tense situations in the rising action, and the bored disinterest that Carraway portrays to demonstrate the author’s need to emphasize the apathy he feels toward the hackneyed preoccupations of the ignorant rich societies; these states of being within the book are represented by the clever manipulations of sentence structure.

• ·      The author illustrates the luxury of the homes in the novel through a continuous use of polysyndeton and elongated sentences. At the start of the novel, Nick Carraway describes the neighborhood he has recently moved into and recalls that the house on his right is “a colossal affair by any standard—it [is] a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It [is] Gatsby’s mansion” (5). The dash before the description of the house allows for an interruption of the narrator’s train of thought, and it is a symbol that calls for the reader’s attention to the appearance of the mansion. The repeated utilization of the conjunction extracts a feeling of incredulity as it asserts each individual aspect of the house’s outward physical characteristics. Another example of the incredible décor and wealth of a residence is displayed through the retelling of a party at Gatsby’s house and the narrator explains every detail, even the “the orchestra,… no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums” (40). The mention of every single instrument in the ensemble conveys the author’s enthusiasm towards the celebration. With the addition of the polysyndeton when identifying the instruments makes the sentence more complex and draws the attention to the reader. The repeated conjunction makes the sentence sound like the author is raving, implying that he is very fascinated with the band and desires his readers to feel the same as him. These syntactically long sentences and repetitive utilization of the term “and” clearly accentuate the author’s admiration of the affluence of the narrator’s neighbor.
• ·      F. Scott Fitzgerald’s regular use of long, awkward sentences establish the main character’s inability to engage in conversation with his peers comfortably. When Nick has just heard the telephone ring in the Buchanan mansion, “among the broken fragments of the last few minutes at table [he] remember[s] the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and [he is] conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one, and yet to avoid all eyes” (15). The author writes with a plethora of commas, establishing the narrator’s minimal communication skills. The interrupting clauses (such as “pointlessly” and “broken fragments”) create a tone of uncertainty, as they avoid the theme of the sentence and frustrate the reader with the confusingly described situation. Again, when the narrator is socializing with his friends on a particularly sweltering day in New York, the argument of where to spend the day “ended by herding [them] into that room that eludes [him], though [he has] a sharp physical memory that, in the course of it, [his] underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around [his] legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across [his] back” (126). While Nick is complaining about the heat with his long descriptions and the imagery-filled conditions of his state of being, he also shows his reluctance to reveal this information as he states unnecessary clauses leading up to these descriptions. This emphasizes the character’s unpleasant sentiments toward his current condition with his close friends.
• ·      The narrator also illustrates his sarcastic disinterest towards those of equivalent economic class to himself and he shows this with relatively short dialogues and polysyndeton. When talking to an acquaintance about vacation and the horrible relationship between Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Nick simply states, “It’d be more discreet” for the couple of Tom and Myrtle Wilson “to go to Europe” (34). As Catherine elaborates on vacations to Europe, Nick replies boringly, “Really” and “Stay long?” (34). The narrator’s lack of effort to put forth in the conversation displays his isolation from the seemingly tedious discussions of the wealthy class. While at a party with those of the West Egg at Gatsby’s house, Nick states that he is used to the many crowds that attend the get-togethers and he has met a group of girls but has “forgotten their names—Jaqueline, [he] think[s], or else Consuela, or Gloria or Judy or June” (63). The repeated use of the term “or” displays the author’s lackadaisical (and possibly intoxicated, since he is at a party) attitude toward the people. The names he offers as possible options are so diverse and wide ranged that they further implicate the narrator’s indifference towards those around him.

The Class Clash

As Nick Carraway in the book The Great Gatsby ventures through many environments within New York, he experiences both sides of the economic system in the countryside and the urban areas. Through the vast use of intense diction, the author of the novel reveals his dislike of both the poor and rich societies in the early twentieth century.

• ·      When comparing the West Egg and East Egg, the narrator (Carraway) conveys his negative tone towards the wastefulness and ridiculous attitude of the affluent people on both sides of the island. While Nick is attending one of Gatsby’s parties on the West Egg, he describes the sequences of dances and emphasizes how the “old men [are] pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles” and some of the higher-class couples are “holding each other torturously, fashionably” (46). The terms “pushing”, “graceless”, and “torturously” implicate a sense of chaos and the words clearly demonstrate Nick’s opinion that the rich in the area are unorganized and try to appear gentlemanly and ladylike but they enact the opposite. At another one of Gatsby’s parties, the narrator is sitting near an inebriated group of partygoers and he is appalled to discover a girl attempt “unsuccessfully, to slump against [his] shoulder” (106). As Nick refers to the effort to relax as an unsuccessful feat, he iterates the stupidity of the wealthy as a whole and makes the small action sound like a failure, which minimizes the respect of the reader towards the woman even more. While the people in the west side of the island are characterized as a more humiliatingly boisterous group, the narrator expresses his exasperation at the seemingly delicate and old-fashioned personalities of the prosperous families in the East Egg. During a get-together at the residence of the Buchanan family (cousins of the narrator), the host, Tom Buchanan, rants about the white superiority over racial minorities and Nick listens to the reply from the wife: “’We’ve got to beat them down,’ whisper[s] Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun” (13). The strange adjectives used in the break of dialogue add a more disturbing quality to the discussion. The author emphasizes the reality of her words when he utilizes the oxymoron of “winking” and “ferocious” and establishes the irony in the actions of the wife. Even though she acts light-hearted, there is no doubt that the comment is serious enough to be documented in a negative way. When Nick first greets the family after many years of little correspondence, he realizes the difference in appearance of his friend Tom, stating that he has “two shining arrogant eyes [that have] established dominance over his face and [give] him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward” (7). Personifying “eyes”, Fitzgerald offers a new frightening perspective when referring to the influence of wealth on the once hospitable man. Now that he is “arrogant” and stands “aggressively”, the point comes across that the increase in social and economic stature has defaced the moral values of the host, which is evidently offending to the narrator through his dismayed diction. When Nick later hears a description of Daisy from her ex-lover, Gatsby, he interprets the praises of the woman as Daisy being “young and her artificial world [being] redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery” (151), which creates a degrading undertone towards the character’s ignorance. “Cheerful snobbery” and “artificial world” are phrases that develop a sense of empty headedness and that lend significance to Nick’s point that the rich in the East (and the West, for that matter) know nothing of the hardships of those in middle and lower classes and he accentuates this fact by choosing specific words to solidify his notions.
• ·      Although Fitzgerald is degrading towards the wealthy in New York, he is also unsympathetic towards those who have little money that live in the urban areas and he accentuates this with firm, unforgiving language. During a trip to the city, Nick describes his surroundings with disdain, depicting them as “ashes tak[ing] the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and…. men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air” (23). The words used within this quote imply the experience of death with the act of dying itself (“crumbling”) and the result of cremation (“ashes”). The author is equating the urban atmosphere to eternal misery and self-decimation, making the reader understand that the author does not desire to become like those in the decrepit city. Fitzgerald continues with his antipathy as he narrates how Nick visits Wilson’s car repair business, and he abhors the “unprosperous and bare” interior, along with the “dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouch[es] in a dim corner” (25). Nick’s distaste is evident in his utilization of the adjective “dim” (located in the previous quote as well) and shows that the lack of light represents the ugly antiquity of the garage. With the addition of the adjectives “unprosperous” and “bare”, the negative connotations leave the reader to believe that the environment of a common business in the poverty-stricken city is abominable to the author. 

Fitzgerald's Rhetorical Devices

• ·      Adage: “’Whenever you feel like criticizing any one… just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantage that you’ve had’”(1).
• ·      Paradox: “I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all” (6).
• ·      Irony: “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it” (11).
• ·      Sarcasm: “’Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?’ ‘That’s why I came over to-night’” (13).
• ·      Onomatopoeia: “When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jingled up and down upon her arms” (30).
• ·      Parallelism: “I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life” (35).

In “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author employs various rhetorical strategies to display his specific way of communicating the characteristics of the narrator, Nick Carraway. The author utilizes the adage at the very start of the novel to make a sufficient summary of the story’s main theme- the judgment of others (such as Gatsby). Fitzgerald adds in the tie back to the narrator in order to establish the character’s well-being and his state of mind throughout the plot of “The Great Gatsby”.

      At the beginning of the plot line (through the juxtaposition of “friends” and their relationship), Nick Carraway displays the isolation he feels from his own acquaintances. The fact that one of the friends he is visiting happens to be his cousin makes the statement even more depressing and pitiable. This utilization of paradox allows the reader to fully grasp Nick’s inability to communicate well with others.

      The dialogue of others to the narrator himself conveys his incredulity at the pettiness of the old rich in the East Egg as he relays Daisy Buchanan’s ridiculous remark on the longest day of the year. To “miss” something that took such a large duration of time is an ironic implication and creates a tone of sarcastic disdain from the author.

      Nick Carraway sarcastically replies to an innocent question from one of his friends at the party he is attending. This demonstrates the narrator’s lack of respect towards his peers and the disinterest he feels when discussing topics such as “the butler’s nose”. The biting answer is meant to make the question and thought process of the rich as empty and insignificant.

The narrator's hollow view of the rich continues with the onomatopoeia in the description of the woman’s attire, which develops the idea that the decorations along her arms are pointless and annoying (since “clicking” and “jingling” are used in a negative connotation in this example). The fact that the narrator emphasizes the aggravating sound of the jewelry makes him seem overly judgmental.

            As he describes his existence with a sentence containing parallel structure, the narrator utilizes the juxtaposing words to better illustrate his contradicting opinions of life. He cleverly encompasses both sides of an argument and exposes his undying grief regarding human nature and its unpredictability.