F Scott Fitzgerald Use Figurative Language In The Great Gatsby

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself,” says American artist Andy Warhol (BrainyQuote.com). Often, people take a back seat to time while they simply wait for it to fix things, but in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the titular character, Jay Gatsby, does no such thing. He seeks to take control of time by manipulating the present to fix the past. This is a common misconception held by not only Jay Gatsby, but also many World War I veterans in the 1920s as they sought to make up for the time they lost with their loved ones when they were overseas. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, he utilizes chilling and increasingly darker imagery and figurative language surrounding

When Tom and Daisy finally decide to make an appearance at one of Gatsby’s elaborate parties, Tom immediately loathes the entire situation and provokes an argument with Daisy about how Gatsby earned his fortune. After tensions settle Gatsby, overthinking as usual, worries that Daisy did not enjoy herself, feeling “far away from her,” as it is “hard to make her understand” (Fitzgerald 109). He wants her to understand not only how much he loves her, but also his need for her affirmation and denial of her supposed “love” for Tom. In the passage, Fitzgerald expresses how the past, in terms of Daisy and time, haunts Gatsby. He and Daisy used to “sit for hours” just talking, binding together their souls through conversation, to a point where they understood each other so deeply that they knew exactly how the other felt. However, times have changed, and Gatsby feels that those hours were in vain because Daisy no longer understands the way he feels about her. As time went on, it tore them apart at the most important seam because they lost the ability to communicate with one another, and thus they drifted further and further apart without Gatsby’s ability to control it. Relationships are hard waters to navigate. Whether it

Fitzgerald uses a flashback to reward readers with Gatsby’s and Daisy’s long-anticipated history, finally explaining why Gatsby is so dead-set on winning Daisy back, and why he feels betrayed by time. Nick reveals that the name Jay Gatsby is really a pseudonym for James Gatz. Under the assumed name, Gatsby believes he can achieve success to a level worthy of attaining Daisy, rather than be the “penniless young man without a past” (Fitzgerald 149). However, in his pursuit of a past, Gatsby found himself resenting it because after making a name for himself in the war effort, he was sent to Oxford rather than back home. All-the-while, Daisy, back home, engulfs herself in an “artificial world” of parties, champagne, flowers, and orchestras that “summed up the sadness and suggestiveness of life” (Fitzgerald 151). During the post-World War I era, the new societal craze was jazz music, complete with orchestras and horns and pianos. It was because of the newly widespread ideal of consumerism and the invention of the radio that spread all around the country. The Jazz craze especially settled in among the younger generation like Daisy as it became all the rage to look like a “flapper,” a bobbed hair,