My Review On The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a very intriguing book that I was actually very interested in.  Most of the assigned novels at school only consist of history and different things, like rhetorical strategies, to learn about.  Not only did this book have history and figurative language incorporated, it also had a great story and contained humor as well.  My favorite parts of the book included humor about different characters and their acts.  An example would be the description of Jordan Baker’s personality and her odd, unanticipated remarks.  I also enjoyed how all of the characters were related in one way or another.  Most of the characters, though, reflected back to Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby’s neighbor.  Jay Gatsby was in love with Daisy, Nick’s cousin, but she was married to Tom.  Instead of Gatsby asking Daisy to have lunch, he talks to Nick and arranges a meeting through him.  Even though Nick is the narrator of the novel, as a character I think he is one of the most important.  At the end of the book, a misfortune involving Gatsby occurs and I found it unique that he did not take his own life. Instead, Wilson takes his life with a single shot and no warning.  Over all, I very much enjoyed the book and reading it in class. I encourage all high schools to teach this book and discuss it as a class; simply to be sure every detail is addressed so that every one can enjoy this book as much as possible. 

Text Connections In the Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, can be related to the world in many different ways. One connection is to the war in Iraq.  When Wilson kills Gatsby, it could remind someone of a member of the Taliban. This group usually does what it pleases and if that means killing an innocent person, the innocent will die.  Wilson, in this case, can be related to a Taliban member.  This is because he intrudes onto Gatsby’s property and shoots him while he is defenseless.  After the incident, the only evidence of the killer was the sight of his “body a little way off in the grass”(162).  Like Wilson, the Taliban barely leaves any evidence that can be mapped back to them. The author also relates this situation to the holocaust because the killing of Gatsby is easily relatable to the killing of innocent Jews in concentration camps.   Altogether, throughout his novel, Fitzgerald makes countless references to events in the outside world such as the two above.

Syntax In The Great Gatsby

•  “By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, 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 repetition of the word “and” effectively creates an overwhelming feeling of crowdedness of the orchestra.  While informing the reader of the density of the orchestra, Fitzgerald also infers that all of Gatsby’s parties are overly compacted with people.  The polysyndeton also lets this sentence flow easily and eliminate any pauses or stopping while reading. This example of syntax proficiently advocates the author’s descriptive style as well as his interested tone in the remarkable band of instruments.

• “I walked out the back way – just as Gatsby had when he had made his nervous circuit of the house half an hour before – and ran for a huge black knotted tree, whose massed leaves made a fabric against the rain”(88).

When Nick narrates these words, his thoughts are interrupted and a discontented feeling comes over him.  While the dashes inform the reader that Nick is very preoccupied with his thoughts and actions, they also generate Fitzgerald’s tone in the passage.  The dashes in this sentence interject a second thought into Fitzgerald’s writing, creating a broken and gloomy tone. This tone is also portrayed through imagery of a dark, stormy night when Gatsby is away – again exposing Fitzgerald’s descriptive style.

Diction In The Great Gatsby

In chapter seven of his book, Fitzgerald conveys a melancholic and miserable tone through diction.  On the hottest day of summer, Nick narrates that “the relentless beating heat” shone down on him.  The word “relentless” highlights that the heat of the sun was never-ending and was miserable for him to sit through.  Nick also states that the sun had made one person “physically sick.”  This also creates the feeling of being miserable and sad because when someone is sick they are limited to their activities, thus making everything tedious while sick.  Lastly, Fitzgerald states the words, “vaguely disquieting” in an act to create a very gloomy image of the day coming to an end.  All together the writer expresses his gloomy feelings through diction and the reader can successfully infer his tone because of the word choice.

Rhetorical Strategies In The Great Gatsby

·      Simile: “A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea”(8).

·      Alliteration:  “A breeze blew through the room…”(8).

·      Metaphor: “This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills…”(23).

·      Imagery: “The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck”(27).

·      Polysyndeton: “By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, 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).

·      Oxymoron: “…the unreality of reality…”(99).

In the novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, many rhetorical strategies are used to convey the author’s style.  The simile listed above emphasizes the way that Fitzgerald is fond of creating an image with a limited amount of words.  This simile also shows that the house that Nick Carraway is in has the windows open when there is clearly a storm approaching.  The reader can infer there is a storm coming because the curtains in the room are compared to flags, which only wave in strong winds.  The metaphor, also stated above, relates the soil of a valley, to ashes on the ground as well as provides a vivid source of imagery.  Both of these rhetorical strategies help to reveal Fitzgerald’s descriptive style of writing in that they both contain imagery.