The Humanization of Literature “Listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness, like a heartbeat, drives you mad in the stillness of remembering what you had.” -Stevie Nicks Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is among the most frequently interpolated American novels, from the Peanuts comic strip to Taylor Swift songs. This high engagement is driven by newly popularized narrative techniques that mimic the human condition in poetic capacity that transcends the standard romance novel. In short it satisfies the ego of a classics reader while engaging the modern. Fitzgerald’s blend of elegiac and colloquial style engaged readers, contriving the modern narrative. Thus, Fitzgerald’s application of focalization is a prime example of The Great Gatsby’s …show more content…
The mind does not flow in a straight line, it forgets, remembers, adds, and amends. Hence the use of flashbacks such as Nick writing of Jordans recollection of first meeting Gatsby at seventeen and Daisy’s wedding. This works particularly well mimicking the familiar face and unplaceable feeling, giving the book a more natural flow contributing to the realistic narrative readers love. However, flashbacks also contribute to the book's longing aesthetic as the memory typically tightropes between recollection and fantasy. Such as in reminiscence of five years prior when Gatsby walked Daisy home, Nick was “reminded of something--an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago” (Fitzgerald 118). A common recurrence of memories feeling significant and characters grappling at their meaning. This not only allows for the reader to form their own analysis from the subtle symbolism, but once again models how people would dissect their pasts in real life, not treated to a view above the trees. Also not immune from getting caught up in memory or of imperfect recollection, the hazy atmosphere colored by glossy post-detailing, just creates a pretty