It was a'ight...

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was, in my opinion, a decent novel. Not the greatest novel I have ever read, but it was moderately interesting and engaging. I enjoyed the storyline and its portrayal of the “roarin’ twenties”; however I found Gatsby’s love for Daisy to be a little shallow. His love for her seemed to just be a part of his whole scheme. If he was going to a rich and swanky big-wig, then having a rich and swanky woman was his one-way ticket to the wealthy lifestyle he desired. I did enjoy Fitzgerald’s meticulousness, though. His selection of detail and characterization of even the smallest characters provided the nuances and intimate-ness that I appreciate in novels I read. I highly value dynamic and developed characters in everything: novels, movies, TV shows. My favorite aspect in the novel would have to be Fitzgerald brilliant imagery whether he was depicting New York, the valley of ashes, or one of Gatsby’s parties, he successfully immersed me in the scene which allowed me to have a greater reading experience.

Gatsby the "Robber Baron"

When I read the scene about Nick and Gatsby’s luncheon in New York with the shady Wolfshiem, I instantly thought about how Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s whole dodgy enterprise is connected to the bootleggers, rum-runners, political machines, organized crime, and flat-out corruption very characteristic of the Jazz Age and the “roarin’ twenties” in general. In my AP United States History class, we are currently studying the late nineteenth century where the unprecedented growth of industry and capitalism went unchecked at the time and thus stimulated greed and corruption from most of the industrialists and tycoons, or “robber barons” as they are better known. By definition a “robber baron” is a very wealthy person who attains their wealth by unethical means. Technically, Gatsby would be considered a “robber baron” being that he amassed his fortune through bootlegging. “For Gatsby, who throws the most sumptuous parties of all and who seems richer than anyone else, to have ties to the world of bootleg alcohol would only make him a more perfect symbol of the strange combination of moral decadence and vibrant optimism that Fitzgerald portrays as the spirit of 1920s America” ("Sparknotes.com").

Works Cited

"The Great Gatsby." Sparknotes.com n. pag. Web. 12 Jan 2011.

Syntax. All the cool kids are doin' it.

• ·         “The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light” (41).

This continuous, run-on sentence is used by Fitzgerald to depict one of Gatsby’s parties that Nick is attending. The excess of commas and absence of conjunctions (asyndetons) blend the clauses and render the sentence, as well as the scene, to a rhythmic blur. By doing so, Fitzgerald is able to illustrate the character of Gatsby’s parties as fast-paced, stimulating, having a contrast in the types of guests, and yet seemingly insignificant.

• ·         “From West Egg came the Poles and the Mulreadys and Ceicil Roebuck and Cecil Schoen and Gulick the State senator and Newton Orchid, who controlled Films Par Excellence, and Eckhaust and Clyde Cohen and Don S. Schwartze (the son) and Arthur McCarty, all connected with the movies in one way or another. And the Catlips and the Bembergs and G. Earl Muldoon, the brother to that Muldoon who afterward strangled his wife. Da Fontano the promoter came there, and Ed Legros and James B. (“Rot-Gut”) Ferret and the De Jongs and Ernest Lilly—they came to gamble, and when Ferret wandered into the garden it meant he was cleaned out and Associated Traction would have to fluctuate profitably next day” (62).

This paragraph, which is part of five other paragraphs of similar construction used to list several of Gatsby’s random guests at his lavish parties, consists of only three sentences, all of them run-on and riddled with commas. By composing these sentences as run-on, it mirrors Gatsby’s seemingly never-ending list of guests. Also, Fitzgerald includes phrases in parenthesis in this and the other paragraphs to give extra information about some of the guests such as nicknames or affiliations to other guests showing the extensive network of high-class individuals that Gatsby chooses to invite to his parties and surround himself with.

Diction leads to tone. It's the gateway rhetorical strategy. Soon they'll be using zeugmas for all we know!

• ·         To open Chapter II, Fitzgerald paints the dismal picture of “the valley of ashes” with not only imagery, but with his potent diction. He depicts this valley “between West Egg and New York” as being a “desolate” wasteland “where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens”, where the “ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud” (23). Using such words as “desolate,” “ash-gray,” “grotesque,” and “swarm” lend a dreary and miserable tone to the passage which serves to emphasize the absolute desolation and gloom of the valley and establishes the overall sadness that pervades the rest of the chapter.

• ·         In Nick’s description of his everyday life in Chapter III, he discloses that he is beginning to like New York and its “racy, adventurous feel” (56). He admits that he walks up Fifth Avenue and people-watches and imagines himself with “romantic women” he sees. “In [his] mind, [he] follows them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at [him] before they faded through a door into warm darkness.” The gentle goodbyes of his fantasies and the “haunting loneliness” that “the enchanted metropolitan twilight” makes him feel all possess an air of soft sadness that craft a melancholy tone which he goes on to use throughout his description of his life. This melancholy description of his life is perhaps used to contrast and highlight the fast-paced lavishness of Gatsby’s which he depicts earlier in the chapter.

Rhetorical Strategies up in here...

Asyndeton:

"I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler" (4).

Litotes:

"...not a little sinister..." (5).

"...with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money" (68).

Personification:

"...then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret" (14).

Imagery:

"Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight" (23).

"We passed a barrier of dark trees, and then the facade of Fifty-ninth Street, a block of delicate pale light, beamed down into the park" (80).

"The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes on the lawn" (47).

Simile:

"Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart" (20).

"...at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond..." (51).

"Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes" (86).

Metaphor:

"A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby's house..." (55).

Onomatopoeia:

"...I heard the familiar 'jug-jug-spat!' of a motorcycle..." (68).

Anaphora:

"'Filled with faces dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever'" (70).

Oxymoron:

"...began to eat with ferocious delicacy" (71).

Fitzgerald utilizes numerous rhetorical strategies in his writing to emphasize certain aspects in a sentence or paragraph, provide deeper descriptions of feelings or scenes, and put situations into perspective for the reader. The Great Gatsby is mottled with many different types of rhetorical strategies, however the most prevalent would indubitably be imagery and similes.

The inundation of imagery that Fitzgerald springs upon the reader serves to convey numerous features. By using it frequently to describe Gatsby’s mansion and his parties, he is able to express to the reader Gatsby’s outrageous the level of opulence, luxury, and decadence. When used to paint a picture of the valley of ashes, Fitzgerald emphasizes the dirty, murky poverty that exists there. The reader is able to glimpse into Nick’s world of New York in the Jazz Age and gain a close perspective of society at the time, which facilitates the comprehension of several other aspects of the novel.

Also, Fitzgerald sprinkles similes throughout the novel. These similes are most frequently used to enhance the descriptions of moods, feelings, and mannerisms of the novel’s characters. Doing so lends the reader insight to the character’s essence and allows for an analysis of the character on a deeper level.

Inspiration for the blog name...

http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=259

Kate Beaton is pretty much amazing. Thanks, Kate. Thate.