Rhetorical Strategies

• ·      Simile: “My incredulity was submerged in fascination now; it was like skimming hastily through a dozen magazines” (66).

• ·      Oxymoron: “A succulent hash arrived, and Mr. Wolfsheim, forgetting the more sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole, began to eat with ferocious delicacy” (71).

• ·      Imagery: “Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motor-boat that bumped the tide offshore” (7).

• ·      Polysyndeton: “I have forgotten their names--- Jaqueline, I think, or else Consuela, or Gloria, or Judy, or June, and their last names were either the melodious names of flowers and months or the sterner ones of the great American capitalists whose cousins, if pressed, they would confess themselves to be” (63).

• ·     Simile: “‘But we heard it,’ insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. ‘We heard it from three people, so it must be true’” (19).

Analysis:

            In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses a numerous amount of rhetorical strategies to manufacture a diverse way of writing. The use of such strategies adds tremendously to the show Fitzgerald’s style of writing. Fitzgerald shows Gatsby as this incredible figure, yet also mysterious. When Gatsby is telling Nick about his life, Nick is utterly amazed at all the things that he has done and accomplished. By receiving all this information in only one sitting, Nick is comparing it to “skimming through a dozen magazines”, where he was seeing and hearing about many things very quickly. The oxymoron is used to depict Mr. Wolfsheim as an incarcerated beast. Mr. Wolfsheim has so much power and authority, and Fitzgerald is showing that by using contradictory words to characterize the way he is eating. Fitzgerald uses imagery because he is painting a beautiful scene, only using words. While reading this passage, one is able to see a clear picture of what Fitzgerald is describing in their minds. The polysyndeton suggests what Fitzgerald might have felt when returning home from Europe after the war. On return to the United States, he must have been introduced to many people at elaborate parties that he went to. Fitzgerald shows this by having Nick not be able to remember the names of women he had just met at the party. Lastly, the simile is showing how Daisy began to open up to Nick as flowers do on a hot day when the sun is shinning down upon them.