·
Homily: “Whenever you
feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world
haven had the advantages that you’ve had” (Fitzgerald 1).
·
Imagery: “The interior
was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust-covered wreck of a
Ford which crouched in a dim corner” (Fitzgerald 25).
·
Personification: “Two
shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the
appearance of always leaning aggressively forward” (Fitzgerald 7).
In The
Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald employs many rhetorical strategies. The
most prominent in the novel, is imagery, and figurative language. Throughout
the entire novel, one could almost pretend to be in the setting, and become a
part of the story due to the extensive details, descriptions, and figurative
language. At all times, Fitzgerald is continuously supplying more, and more
details, which add to the scene, painting a vivid picture in the readers mind.
Secondly is the figurative language, the reader can start to develop an
understanding of the personalities of the characters in this novel. The
employment of this style of figurative language allows the reader to be an
omnipotent third person, and one can start to make inferences at what the
characters are thinking about each situation, because of how the figurative
language describes and presents all of the characters. Take the homily,
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people
in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had” (Fitzgerald 1). In
this certain situation, the reader can identify the tone of Nick’s virtue. He
is recalling the words of his father, and the reader may identify the tone of
slight disgust in Nick’s voice, reminding himself that he has had a very
privileged life, and he needs to remain humble. This is an epitome of Nick’s
character, and how the reader can delve into the personalities of the rest of
the characters in the novel.
I like your analysis of how amazing Fitzgerald conveys his thoughts and themes to us as readers. It is the mark of a truly great writer of give us such a perfect picture of what he is seeing around him, which in his case, is amazing wealth and total disillusionment in the population. Your thoughts on the homily are nicely developed, but you did not tell us how it affected Fitzgerald's themes or his style. Because Nick is having to remind himself to be humble, Fitzgerald makes it clear that it is normally easy for him to fall into the classic pattern of disillusionment that is exhibited by most of the population around him.
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ReplyDeleteMore examples of devices would have better supported your claim that Fitzgerald uses them to develop the story. However, the homily example was very sophisticated and crucial to proving that rhetorical strategies is a big part of Gatsby's writing style. I like how you interpreted the homily as personifying Nicks whole character and i totally agree; Nick seems to follow his quote all through out the book being careful not to intervene into peoples problems. Your ideas about the omnipotent third person really spoke to me and explained why these writers use rhetorical devices. As readers we know more than the characters therefore we can predict different events and infer the different actions that the characters take. For example, we knew the whole time about Gatsby's love for Daisy and could almost predict the confrontation between him and Tom.
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