Personal Review

Of all of the books I have been forced to read throughout my high school years, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is my favorite. It is not the overall plot that makes this novel exciting, but the way Fitzgerald uses diction, syntax, and rhetorical strategies throughout the entire story, and on top of all that his work is very easily relatable to anyone who has or ever will be in high school. Although I am only a junior in high school, I feel as if I have heard it all by now, the drama, the rumors, the lies. None of it is new to me anymore and by reading this novel I have observed that it is best to play the role of Nick Carraway and stay on the sidelines so to speak, and let all of the people who are willing, destroy their lives with meaningless issues that will get you nowhere in life. Another lesson that can be extracted from this book is the idea that looking back on the past and wishing hopelessly to relive past experiences can only force you back into it. Which is a terrible thing to do because how is it possible to progress forward and live a good and fulfilling life if you are always trying to go backwards? Gatsby is a prime example of that because him trying to win Daisy back ultimately results in his death. Instead of moving on with his life, he dedicates five years to trying to revive a past relationship as it once was before the war. The ending of the novel (though predictable because someone always manages to get killed in one of these classics) seems fitting to me. Not because Gatsby deserves to die, which I do not believe he does, but because everything comes with a price, and the five years of his life dedicated to winning Daisy back are all wasted in the end. It is true that we are all going to die sooner or later, so why not live life in the moment and look forward instead of concentrating on what could have been.

Text Connection

In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald makes many text-to-world connections, one of the main ones that truly stood out was when Daisy says, “And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (17). This connection really emphasizes on the sexual inequality portrayed throughout the novel and which is still very apparent in today’s world.  Men are generally more successful than females even still in society nowadays, back in the 1920s the only role women could play is to stay at home and perform the usual household duties. Daisy is wishing that her newborn daughter will be beautiful, naïve, and ignorant of hard work. What kind of mother would wish this upon her daughter? Daisy is hopeless because of her husband’s unfaithfulness and only sees the evil things in life which causes her to overlooking the positives. She has just been blessed with a child and all she can say is that she wishes her to be a fool.  

Syntax

·         “A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about...like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.” (161) The way in which Fitzgerald uses syntax influences his style and the purpose of this story from beginning to end in this novel. This is the last thought Gatsby has before he is shot and killed by Mr. Wilson. When he says “a new world, material without being real” he means that he has everything a man could wish for materially, but what he lacks is friendship and true relationships in his life, therefore, his world is not real, only fake. All of the commas he uses help build suspense and mystery until he sees a figure “gliding” towards him which eventually turns out to be his murderer.

·         “The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of transit, a thin red circle in the water.” (162) Everything is calm after the murder occurs. The only hint that something terrible has happened is in the last part of the sentence when he says “a thin red circle in the water”. Fitzgerald’s attention to detail truly brings the story to life just by mentioning the smaller things. It is the smaller things that make a large difference in this novel.

·         “Then I turned back to Gatsby—and was startled at his expression. He looked—and this is said in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden—as if he had “killed a man.”” (134) The second two dashes used in this passage prove that despite what everyone else has said about Gatsby killing a man, Nick can now see it for himself just because of the look in his eyes. The pauses throughout this sentence give it a deeper meaning and make it appear more valid because of the use of syntax.

Diction

With his use of diction, Fitzgerald goes very in depth with the further development of each character’s complex personalities and the overall tone of the novel which is overall depressing and dramatic. Nick Carraway expresses a deep love for Jordan Baker throughout the novel but at the same time he is repulsed by her habit of lying, through Fitzgerald’s use of imagery one can see, very apparently, Nick’s attraction towards her, “for a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened” (14). Nick is an extremely sensible and well-rounded individual with the ability to listen and keep quiet when he needs to, which is why all of the other people in this story trust him so much and confide in him so often with their deepest secrets. On the other hand, Jay Gatsby tries to create this image of insurmountable wealth and luxury about himself in order to impress others, even if he has never met them before in his life. Gatsby is the epitome of a self-made man, and because he is trying to keep his reputation up he throws large parties all the time and has become a local celebrity. In reality, Gatsby only wishes to rekindle his love affair with Daisy Buchanan; this drive eventually results in his demise, “he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream” (161).  Fitzgerald phrases this perfectly when he says that Gatsby has “lived too long with a single dream” which was Daisy; he also uses alliteration by saying “old warm world” and that really puts emphasis on the fact that Gatsby wishes he could go back in time and be in love and be loved by Daisy once again. The ending of this novel leaves the reader with a sad and empty confusion because not one of the main characters ends up with the life that they had hoped for; Gatsby is dead, Nick and Jordan stop seeing each other, and Daisy is trapped with her unfaithful husband for the remainder of her years. Nothing is as it should be, but yet the ending seems fitting because when all is said and done, nothing ever ends perfectly.

Rhetorical Strategies

·         Simile: “then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk” (14)

·         Alliteration: “His wife was shrill, languid, handsome, and horrible” (30)

·         Colloquial: “Want to go with me, old sport?” (47)

·         Allegory: “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. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor” (48)

·         Anecdote: “One October day in nineteen-seventeen——(said Jordan Baker that afternoon, sitting up very straight on a straight chair in the tea-garden at the Plaza Hotel)” (74)

·         Metaphor: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (180)

Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, uses many different rhetorical strategies throughout his work in order to portray each character’s traits. The simile at the top of the list is describing Nick Carraway’s loving view of Jordan Baker’s features. Nick is a very stable and reliable person from the beginning till the end of the novel, which makes him a great narrator because one will always know that the information being given is true; he is not very interested in material things like his friend Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald uses an allegory describing Mr. Gatsby’s smile and how any person can relate to his smile so it is the perfect way to get whatever he wants, and Gatsby has an amazing knack for setting goals and eventually achieving the things that he desires. The colloquial “old sport” is used by Gatsby throughout the whole story to try and make everyone feel like they are his friend and that he is just an average man, for example when Jay and Nick first meet, Nick has absolutely no idea that the man he is speaking with is in fact The Great Gatsby. The metaphor applied as the last line of the novel compares all humans to boats, and says that we are all beating against the current trying to move forward with our lives but hopelessly being pushed backwards into the past; this truly exhibits the course of Gatsby’s life. He is beating against the current while making money illegally for a chance to be able to impress Daisy and win her back, and all the while, he wishes to go back to the past when they were just two lovers without a care in the world. This ultimately results in his death, if he could only move on with his life and get over Daisy then he would be leading a different life entirely and not this unhealthy lifestyle he has developed that revolves around her and her alone. Through Fitzgerald's use of these rhetorical strategies, he is able to make each individual in his story very lifelike with their own personalities and ways of thinking in different situations.