Simile: “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths along the whisperings and the champagne and the stars” (39).
Invective: “Daisy! Daisy! Shouted Mrs. Wilson. “I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy Dai-----“ (37).
Onomonopia: “…And blue banners in front of all the houses stretched out stiff and said tut-tut-tut, in a disapproving way” (74).
Imagery: “Two o’clock and the whole corner of the peninsula was blazing with light, which fell unreal on the shrubbery and made thin elongating glints upon the roadside wires” (81).
Anaphora: “’She didn’t like it,’ he said immediately. ‘Of course she did.’ ‘She didn’t like it”’ (109).
Euphemism: “Before he could move from his door the business was over” (137).
Foreshadowing: “So we drove on towards death through the cooling twilight” (136).
Dramatic Irony: “’Wreck!’ said Tom. ‘That’s good. Wilson’ll have a little business at last”’ (137)
Alliteration: “It was all very careless and confused” (179).
Metaphor: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (180).
In his novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses a multitude of rhetorical strategies to create a tone for his story. The novel places an emphasis on strong imagery, with vivid descriptions of Gatsby’s lavish parties and Daisy’s high-brow yet insipid lifestyle. These images allow the reader to picture mentally, and therefore better understand, the characters Fitzgerald creates. In one description of Gatsby’s mansion, the narrator, voiced by Nick Carraway, recalls coming home late one night to bear witness to the spectacle next door: “Two o’clock and the whole corner of the peninsula was blazing with light, which fell unreal on the shrubbery and made thin elongating glints upon the roadside wires” (81). The way in which the lights are described, elongated and blazing, makes the setting seem perfectly beautiful, and the idealistic, hopeful, and lavish tones of the novel seem to shine through and drape themselves across the wires along with the light.
Your insight on the tone that is created by Fitzgerald's use of rhetorical strategies is very similar to my own. I agree with the fact that he creates strong imagery and vivid descriptions throughout his novel to give meaning and illustrate details. I credit you for citing several strategies and they helped you to support your thesis. In my reading, I noticed similies like “The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of transit, a thin red circle in the water” (162). I found many similies similar to this one and they were often used to make more elaborate descriptions of the setting that Fitzgerald wanted to create.
ReplyDeleteMy rhetorical strategies analysis is very similar to your own. The surplus of imagery, irony, similies, and metaphors creates a tone of perfection and beauty. As a response to your comment on my rhetorical strategies post, an additional tone that I felt within Fitzgeralds writing was in fact a feeling of innocence. Though, I do not think that I made my point clear enough. What I felt when reading this novel was not as much a "pure" innocence, as much of an "oblivious" innocence. Maybe I should have picked a better word-such as oblivious-but I felt that innocence fit, because the world which Nick lives in is very much like a fairy tale. The people within it are constantly in a dream-like state of intense happiness, drunkenness, and pleasure, and when I think of childhood, I think of immeasurable happiness. As children, most of us are shielded from the bad in the world, just as the men and women in this novel seem to be-most of the time.
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