Comparing Parties And Funeral In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Compare and Contrast Gatsby’s Parties and Funeral
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Gatsby is known for throwing very lavish parties. There are many people there, music, dancing, drinking, and everyone always has a great time. The irony of Gatsby’s funeral is that even though Gatsby is thought to have many friends and an exciting life, he ends up dying alone. The differences between the parties and his funeral are that the parties are extravagant while the funeral is dull and that many people go to his parties but hardly anyone shows up to his funeral; the parties and funeral are alike because Daisy is one of the people who is wanted at both the most, but never shows up. Daisy goes to one of Gatsby’s parties after she realizes

Nick, the narrator, describes Gatsby’s parties by telling the reader “By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums” (Fitzgerald 40). This is just a small detail about how Gatsby only gets the very best for his parties. At Gatsby’s funeral, “our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a thick drizzle beside the gate- first a motor hearse, horribly black and wet…” (Fitzgerald 174). The funeral is on a rainy day and is muddy and not very inviting. This is the exact opposite of Gatsby’s parties. Unlike the parties as well, not very many people attends the

Nick wrote down the people who attended the party on July 5th, 1922, which was “from East Egg, then, came Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and a man named Bunsen, whom I knew at Yale, and Doctor Webster Civet, who was drowned last summer up in Maine. And the Hornbeams and the Willie Voltaire, and a whole clan named Blackbuck…” (Fitzgerald 62). Nick talks about all of the different people that come to Gatsby’s parties and how most of them are not even invited, but just show up anyways. At Gatsby’s funeral, “…as the time passed and the servants came in and stood waiting in the hall, his eyes began to blink anxiously, and he spoke of the rain in a worried, uncertain way. The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came.” (Fitzgerald 174). Only a few people come to the funeral, and the majority is the servants. Even though Nick calls anyone he can think of to ask them to come to the funeral, even Daisy, they all say they are