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Fitzgerald's Use Of Synesthesia In The Great Gatsby

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Throughout the scene depicting Gatsby’s party, Fitzgerald uses various stylistic elements to showcase the legendary reputation of these lavish affairs and the influence they had on Gatsby’s many guests. Fitzgerald uses varied syntax of lengthy sentences which allows the reader to understand the complexity of the party itself. Fitzgerald also makes use of synesthesia to connect the readers’ senses with vivid imagery that recalls the night’s events. Through Nick’s perspective and Fitzgeralds detailed speech, the reader is able to get a good understanding of what the guests were feeling and experiencing in the moments as the party unfolded. All of these literary components work together to exhibit the overwhelming extent of the opulence that the …show more content…

For instance, Fitzgerald features an illustration of the excess amount of food, which was needed in order to provide for the hundreds of guests, by saying, “ a fortnight of caterers came down” and “buffet tables, garnished with glistening hor d'oeuvres, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs.” Gatsby did not just provide his guests with any ordinary meal but with multiple elaborate courses. Along with the extensive amount of food, a generous amount of alcohol is also supplied to the guests. The vast descriptions of alcohol included everything from “stocks of gin and liquors” to “cocktails permeated the garden”. The alcohol’s strong presence within the passage is included …show more content…

As Nick witnesses the beginning of the party Fitzgerald uses a personification of “the air is alive” to show the prevalent free spirit of gossip and laughter that was maintained by all of Gatsby’s guests. Nick was lost for words as the event unfolded. Fitzgerald therefore depicts the scene as a surreal experience for him as he sees all sense of reality becoming lost among the intoxicated guests. As the guests drink more heavily everything starts to be depicted differently as “the lights grow brighter” and “the opera of voices pitches a key higher.” The “yellow cocktail music” that is played is a form of synesthesia that Fitzgerald incorporates to explain the background music that added to the commotion of the people as the party began. Along with this music Fitzgerald says, “laughter is easier minute by minute spilled with prodigality, tipped out of a cheerful word” to show as the party reached full swing all inhibitions that the guests had once possessed were now let loose. As all restraints are released Fitzgerald compares the guests, through an extended metaphor, to an ocean tide saying they would become “the center of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color.” This is an example of a lengthy, complex sentence that

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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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Fitzgerald incorporates imagery and metaphor in this passage to convey immutability of reality, no matter how grand one's imagination is. In Gatsby’s early life, he lived on a yacht in Lake Superior and attempted to work his way up to the upper class. He was in a “constant, turbulent riot” and was restless, unhappy with his current status. The juxtaposition of “grotesque and fantastic conceits” demonstrates the impalpable desires that a lower class member like himself wants in life. The verb “haunted” further develops the idea that his aspirations were unreachable, but his hope to escape the lower class made them seem possible.

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The Facade of Gatsby’s Parties The figurative language and syntax on page 41 conveys the fallacy of the people at Gatsby's parties. Page 41 begins to describe one of Gatsby’s parties using many forms of figurative language. People arrive with their “hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile,” decked out in their fancy clothes, desperate to be the center of attention.

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In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, parties are a reoccurring motif. Gatsby himself has many large parties. Many of the people at Gatsby’s parties have never even met him and are only interested in attending one of his parties. Baz Luhrmann’s film of The Great Gatsby captures the true essence of the Gatsby parties but differs from Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in the minute details about the time period that the parties take place in.

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Nick, the narrator, describes Gatsby’s parties by telling the reader “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” (Fitzgerald 40). This is just a small detail about how Gatsby only gets the very best for his parties. At Gatsby’s funeral, “our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate- first a motor hearse, horribly black and wet…” (Fitzgerald 174). The funeral is on a rainy day and is muddy and not very inviting.

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He narrates one of Nick’s “Saturday nights” filled with “dazzling parties” that stayed “so vividly” with him that he could still “hear the music and laughter” (179). Nick remembers one of many happy memories he had with Gatsby, mourning the loss of his best friend. The rhetorical device that Fitzgerald

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Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”, most importantly the main character, Jay Gatsby. In an attempt to see an ex-girlfriend that he has never fallen out of love with, Gatsby throws frequent parties in hopes of her attending. These parties were very outrageous. The narrator, Nick, states that, “At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors d’oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold.”

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In the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author uses many differnt retorical devices to add a personal flare to his work. He uses diction, symbolism, and irony to adress many different themes. These themes include Materialism, The American Dream, and includes a sharp and biting ridicule on American society in the 1920’s. The main point of Fitzgerald, arguement is one where he sharply criticizes the Society of the time.

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Casandra Salazar Ms. Tobias English III GT 12 January 2017 The Great Gatsby After reading and watching The Great Gatsby, I gathered the dissemblance and alikeness in both the book and motion picture. As written in “The Great Gatsby”, the first example of similarity is that the book has the same theme to the “Roaring 20’s”. In the written book, Fitzgerald described the parties as huge and dramatic, where as in the movie, the directors did a fantastic job translating Fitzgerald’s words into a lavish visual spectacle of booze, sequins, and confetti.

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1. The first paragraph of Chapter 3 starts off with a glamorous description of Gatsby’s mansion party as oppose to the sudden violent conclusion from Chapter 2 where Tom broke Myrtle’s nose. A magical tone was created when Fitzgerald described, “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among whispering and the champagne and the stars”(Fitzgerald). This created a magical tone because the comparison between the guests and moths highlights Gatsby’s Fitzgerald’s choice in frequently using action verbs helps create a sort of liveliness that Gatsby’s party brings. 2.

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During these parties there would be the people that were invited and there would also be a large sum of people that weren’t invited that showed to the party and a large part of that did not even know who the host was. “ While his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains.” This simile is used to symbolize and represent Gatsby’s wealth and this also represents the type of lifestyle and difference between gatsby and nick even though they are neighbors. Fitzgerald uses similes to represent and better explain the lifestyle of the people during this time period. Similes are used in this book to have the reader better understand the concept of this

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There are several instances where deception creates a false sense of reality in both the book and movie. Fitzgerald writes his book in first person with Nick Carraway as the narrator. The book presents Nick as garrulous. Therefore, the reader sometimes would detect uncertainty since the entire story is told by Nick. However, in the novel, Nick states "I am one of the few honest people I have ever known" (Fitzgerald 63).

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The nature of Gatsby’s parties greatly exhibit the sin of gluttony. Not only is there an excessive amount of food, but also liquor. People are also found in excess at these extravagant affairs. Owl Eyes, a frequent party attender, exclaims “‘Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.’”

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First of all, Nick tells us about the impressive amounts of people that showed up: “wandered around rather ill-at-ease among swirls and eddies of people I didn’t know” Fitzgerald uses a metaphor, swirls and eddies, to give the impression of the numbers of guests; eddies are currents that move constantly, meaning that people travelled in groups, like currents, constantly therefore giving the impression of a messy and busy environment. As well, we get to know that Nick doesn’t fit in within the other guests, as he mentions “wandered around rather ill-at-ease” this is because the people in the party are seeking for the complete opposite of what Nick is. He’s attended because of Gatsby’s invitation, everyone else is there without an invitation and a reckless mentality. Additionally, we discover the incorrect gossip that surrounds the characters, as seen in: "Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.” , this proves the guest’s superficiality, as they aren’t sure the gossip is true, or they made it up in an instant, yet they say it out loud to make themselves seem informed and involved.

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