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Character Analysis: The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Do you start acting differently when you are around certain people? This is based upon how much love you have for them. If you do not really like them, you would not necessarily tell them personal things, or even be nice to them. If you love them, you would get into deep conversations and talk about important things. F. Scott Fitzgerald shows this through Jay Gatsby, an important character in The Great Gatsby. Through his use of symbolism, dialogue, and diction, Fitzgerald evokes the idea that when you are getting closer to someone in which you love, your behavior starts to alter. To begin, Fitzgerald’s use of symbolizing the rain in this passage and other parts of the text instigates a change in the behavior of Gatsby when Daisy, the one …show more content…

Fitzgerald says, “An hour later the front door opened nervously and Gatsby in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold colored tie hurried in” (Fitzgerald 89). The word “nervously” implies Gatsby was nervous when opening the door. Also, it says he hurried in, meaning he is worried about something. Another example is, “Gatsby looked with vacant eyes through a copy of Clay’s ‘Economics,’ starting at the Finnish tread that shook the kitchen floor and peering toward the bleared windows from time to time as if a series of invisible but alarming happenings were taking place outside. Finally he got up and informed me in an uncertain voice that he was going home” (Fitzgerald 89-90). The use of “vacant” suggests that Gatsby is empty at that current moment, not really sure of his surroundings. The “invisible but alarming happenings” means that he is distracted and is not paying attention to the current situation. Finally, Gatsby says in an “uncertain voice that he was going home” which means he is not quite set on what he should do. These words show that Gatsby is not really aware of the full situation and becomes distracted easily because he is

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Fitzgerald utilizes many rhetorical strategies throughout his novel. Specific to the excerpt the rhetorical strategies metaphor and personification are found to be used to strengthen Fitzgerald’s key themes of dreams and reality. Ultimately though, the rhetorical strategies and themes contribute to creating the effect that Gatsby is truly above the average man and that Gatsby, at least to Nick, is some amazing creature that grew from his dreams. The first instance of personification to be used in the passage is in the line, “I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever: I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart” This use of personification has the effect of

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843 Words | 4 Pages

A Rhetorical Analysis of how Fitzgerald explains Gatsby’s Impact on the World, Gatsby’s True Nature, and the Concept of Time Gatsby was a great man that was a caring and loving person who had his life taken from him, by Mr. Wilson, as a result of revenge for being a suspect of Mrs. Wilson’s death. Near the end of the story, Nick Carraway was looking back through Long Island, where he, Gatsby, and Daisy lived. He described many aspects of the island, the mood of the people, and the environment. Nick touched on the point of the atmosphere without Gatsby and his dream that was washed away with blood.

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845 Words | 4 Pages

For a brief moment, miles away from the eyes of god, time itself stood still. And the singing birds went silent in their canopies, and the gentle licks of a passing breeze abated, as if the entire world, save Gatsby, knew. Knew that, like an old timepiece, the gears within the depths of George Wilson’s being had long since begun to fragment, and with the urgency of newfound knowledge, he had only one thought on his mind. Certainly, as he glided towards Gatsby’s mansion—and ultimately, into the foliage that surrounded it— Wilson’s breathing was neither slow nor rapid, nor shallow nor heavy, but rather, it fluctuated with an unrelenting attitude, and trapped between immense grief and rage, he carried himself dangerously with each step.

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552 Words | 3 Pages

• “Closed out my interest,” “short winded relations of man,” whatever is going to happen severely disgusts Nick and seems to turn him into a sort of cynic. Thesis- In this passage, the author foreshadows the eventual down fall of Gatsby who, as made clear through the author’s dark word choice and imagery, is taken down by some unknown, evil force, which makes made the narrator disgusted in society and has turned him into cynic, as evident though figurative language, specifically the diction employed. Passage

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Authors often fuse intricate pieces to their writing to foreshadow later events and enhance their writing. In one of the most famous pieces of American literature, The Great Gatsby, Francis Scott Fitzgerald integrates small dialogues that drop hints to forecast terrible outcomes. The novel occurs during the roaring nineties and accentuates the wild and carefree lifestyle of Long Island’s enclaves. Even though their lives might seem unproblematic, one couple in particular, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, is facing marriage troubles because of their loss of love. While Tom has a love interest with Myrtle, Daisy Buchanan rekindles her relationship with an old lover, Jay Gatsby, after witnessing Tom’s undeniable affair.

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When Gatsby’s full character is brought into the novel he is said to have “‘killed a man’” and been “‘a German spy during the war’” to show other supporting characters ambiguity toward the rumors surrounding his luxurious parties (Fitzgerald 44). Thus, already

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553 Words | 3 Pages

Now Gatsby had a neighbor nick who loves to observe things and as nick says “It was Gatsby's mansion or rather as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman." ( Fitzgerald p.5) Not even Gatsby's neighbor knew anything about the guy who throws gaint parties

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813 Words | 4 Pages

The reader first meets Gatsby in chapter one, when he is described as looking toward the green light, “stretch[ing] out his arms towards the dark water in a curious way… trembling” (25). As to why his behavior is so

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1588 Words | 7 Pages

‘Do you know?’ ‘He’s just a man named Gatsby’” (Fitzgerald 47-48). When he and Daisy finally reunite and rekindle their affair, she once again chooses Tom and abandons Gatsby, and he is once again just a single man, living alone with his thoughts, with no one to share his life with besides himself: “’Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom,’ she admitted in a pitiful voice, ‘It wouldn’t be true’” (Fitzgerald 133).

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1169 Words | 5 Pages

Gatsby travels back to the first time he saw Daisy at her grand home and goes into vivid detail of her house, “There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than the other bedrooms of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year’s shining motor cars and of dancers whose flowers were scarcely withered”. Gatsby goes into the nitty-gritty details of Daisy’s home, calling it ‘beautiful’, ‘gay and radiant’ and ‘breathing’ in order to demonstrate how symbolic the home is to him. This is the first taste of the upper class that Gatsby has ever experienced and serves as the true epitome of wealth to Gatsby. He falls in love with the newness of her home and the activities of the rich. Because of Gatsby’s love for the home, when he sees Daisy become consumed by her own luxuries, he feels betrayed; “She vanished into her rich house, into her rich full life, leaving Gatsby-nothing”.

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1120 Words | 5 Pages

At the beginning of The Great Gatsby, Gatsby stares

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1837 Words | 8 Pages

The deception of the characters in Fitzgerald’s novel signifies the emptiness and artificial lifestyle of people in the 1920s. From a young age, Gatsby has never accepted the life he was born into, always seeking a way to participate in the abstract customs of the rich, resulting in his lies to convince Daisy as well of others of his rich background. Gatsby is presented as a character that has not been able to transition his life to the present day time period, keeping his eyes shut from the realities of his dreams, "Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can!"(Fitzgerald 116). In Gatsby’s attempt to change all the features he was born with, including his name, James Gatz, he fails to realize that his dreams are not worthy of him and he will never be able to achieve them.

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797 Words | 4 Pages

The seasons were changing from summer to fall, and on the day of his death it was said to be a warm day with yellowing trees and falling leaves. He was awaiting a phone call that came too late. So while he floated in this pool unaware that it would be his first and last time, Nick Carraway thinks, “I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass” (Fitzgerald 169).

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1218 Words | 5 Pages

The Great Gatsby Literary Analysis “They were careless people…” says Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby. In a story depicting the 1920s during a time of prosperity, growth, and the emergence of the America as a major global power, this statement may seem to be contrary. But in reality, Nick Carraway’s description of his friends and the people he knew, was not only true, but is an indication of those who were striving for the American dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that the American Dream is foolish, the people who pursue it are immoral and reckless, and this pursuit is futile. First, F. Scott Fitzgerald proposes that the American dream is foolish.

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925 Words | 4 Pages

In The Great Gatsby, author F. Scott Fitzgerald utilizes the subjectivity of narration to provide further insight into the characters of the story. Because the novel is told through a first-person point of view, objectivity is nearly impossible. That would require the narrator to disregard their personal feelings and opinions. Therefore, The Great Gatsby is a subjective narrative full of biased opinions about the lives of the wealthy in New York, during the roaring twenties. The individual that expresses these biased views is the narrator Nick Carraway, who is born into the upper class.

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