· Simile: “For a moment the sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk” (14).
· Personification: “A tray of cocktails floated at us through the twilight” (43).’
· Metaphor: “sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory, we started to town” (64).
· Polysyndeton: “I was sure he’d start when he saw the newspapers, just as I was sure there’d be a wire from Daisy before noon—but neither wire nor Mr. Wolfsheim arrived; no one arrived except more police and photographers and newspaper men” (165).
· Imagery: “I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby’s bedroom, a gray, florid man with a hard, empty face—the pioneer debauchee, who during one phase of American life brought back to the Eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon” (100).
In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald writes with an extremely simplistic yet impeccably relevant style. Through his use of rhetorical strategies, he weaves meaning into the simplest of statements, making the novel both easy to read and intriguing to think about. His use of imagery, personification, and metaphor creates a feeling of living through the novel, allowing the reader to see the stern mask on the face of Gatsby’s creator, experience the feeling of floating through one of Gatsby’s extravagant parties in a blur as the world floats by, and feel as though they are sitting in the lavish luxury of Gatsby’s boat of a car. In addition to this, the author’s effective employment of simile allows the reader to not only to see the events occurring, but characterize the people in the novel according to how things such as nature react with them, giving the reader an omniscient sort of feeling. Through the use of polysyndeton, Fitzgerald creates an overwhelming feeling without overwhelming the reader with convoluted sentences and overly loquacious words. This skill allows the reader to clearly understand the text and aids the author in the presentation of his ideas. Through his lucid and comprehensible writing, Fitzgerald creates an entertaining and highly pertinent story.
I definitely agree...the way he implements all of the rhetorical strategies mentioned yet still managaes to keep his style relatively simplistic seems like something impossible to do. Although these strategies would seem to make the book longer, more incomprehensible, and loguacious (as you said), they serve to illuminate the point of what he is trying to say, and instead of distracting the reader from his main objective, they makes the text more understandable and more interesting. The use of similies, metaphors, imagery, and polysyndeton bring the The Great Gatsby to life. Although his words are simplistic, the rhetorical strategies reveal the deeper meaning in them.
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