How Does Gatsby Tell The Story In Chapter 3

The passage I chose to analyze occurred in chapter three of The Great Gatsby. Gatsby decided to host one of his huge, extravagant parties in which Nick, the narrator, was invited. He had been intrigued by the thought of Gatsby and the fact that no one had seemed to have met him at this gathering. Nick was told several different speculating rumors about Gatsby, one even regarding how he had killed a man. The buildup around meeting Gatsby was immense until finally, towards the end of the chapter, Nick meets Gatsby. In the first moment of conversing with Gatsby, Nick noticed his smile. ”It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.”(Fitzgerald 53). This sentence truly displays how the outside world

Gatsby wants people to see him as the personality he puts out into the world or his illusion. He shows people a side of him that isn’t real in a production type manner. Gatsby makes people feel a certain way in order to feed into people’s perception of him as someone that is above everyone. “It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.” (Fitzgerald 53). Nick sees the appeal that everyone else sees in this moment and feels a sense of comfort in Gatsby’s presence. Fitzgerald in this instance makes sure to use certain diction surrounded by being “understood” and “believed in” to make the reader feel the way Nick felt in seeing Gatsby. The device hyperbole is seen being used in Nick’s description when he mentions how Gatsby’s smile gives “eternal reassurance.” The author is attempting to make Gatsby into a character that is praised to the point that it foreshadows the eventual breakdown of who Gatsby really is and how he actually