Use Of Diction In The Great Gatsby

To continue, both authors use diction as a way to differentiate the academic power of different characters. Diction is displayed by both authors to convey the way people talked in the past compared to others based on their social class. Twain uses slang to demonstrate how slaves talked because of their level of knowledge. “‘[Jim]Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn ' hear sumf 'n. Well, I know what I 's gwyne to do: I 's gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it agin.’” (Twain, 5). Slaves were not educated at the time and were mistreated. Twain is stereotyping black and white people to show the way society is separated for meaningless reasons. This is satirical because Jim was capable of escaping slavery and fooled everybody. He was viewed as a white

Additionally, Fitzgerald does the same in his book. He makes the characters speak very differently based on their social class to display the differences. “To them a man who talked after this fashion was either raving drunk or raving crazy” (Fitzgerald, 298). The lower class men are taunting the upper class man for speaking in an educated manner, whereas the intellectual is treated the inferiors as superiors making it ironic. This is satirical because Fitzgerald uses situational irony to convey the maturity of the social classes. As well, Twain shows that the upper class has superiority over the lower class regardless of the intellectual level or age. “I see it warn’t no use wasting words—you can’t learn a nigger to argue. So I quit” (Twain, 83). Huck is saying that Jim is uneducated and teasing him because of his intellectual level; however, Huck is not too intelligent himself, therefore correcting Jim shows verbal irony. Jim also has age and maturity over Jim, but because of his low social class, Huck still remains superior. Those are the ways the authors make their novels satirical with the use of diction in order to differentiate the intellectual levels of the