Critical Examination of a Passage in Great Gatsby

This passage is from the great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It tells a story, specifically the history which Gatsby and Daisy had. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby until the war ended. But as it is Daisy's youth and need for love and attention has made her insecure to stay alone for so long. Soon she attended parties and dances. At one of them she met the safe and strong Tom Buchanan. Despite the fact that she loved Jay, he was not there, so she married Tom.

The diction used in this passage as well as in the whole novel is simple. Therefore Fitzgerald uses simple language to illustrate everyday aspects, such as the decline of the American dream as well as the hollowness of the upper class. By using simple language it makes the audience bigger that can relate to the novel, and therefore makes the novel universal.

Great usage of the s-alliteration is used in "Ð'...while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shinning dust." This describes the action of the multitude ladies moving around is described successfully.

Fitzgerald's style might be called imagistic. The language used is full of images-concrete verbal pictures. There is water imagery in descriptions of the rain, Long Island Sound, and the swimming pool. There are the Godlike eyes of Dr. Eckleburg and in words such as incarnation, and grail. Abstract images are used as well when there is referred to the artificial world as snobbery, sadness. These images do not only describe the world in which the characters live but shows that it does not matter how much power and wealth the characters have, they are still unhappy. Part of these concrete images is the color images. "While a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor." Fitzgerald uses these color images in such a way that it does not only describe but reinforces the themes as well. The reference to golden, silver, shining, twilight emphasizes the focus the characters had on power and wealth, which is part of the value system. These words do describe a bright and beautiful world, but it does not have much behind it of substance. Fitzgerald uses words such as gray to describe the tea hour, which re-establishes the how these rich characters might experience it. This is an underlined description since the characters that lives in East Egg do not see it this way at all.

Some images might more properly called symbols for the way they point beyond themselves to previous events such as the green light at the end of Daisy's dock, for instance, or Dr. Eckleburg's eyes, or Dan Cody's yacht. By using these images Fitzgerald transforms what is on the surface a realistic social novel of the 1920's into a myth.

The word usage throughout this chapter implicitly establishes a connection between the weather and the emotional atmosphere of the novel. Daisy began to move