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.