How Does Fitzergerald Use Social Gatherings In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby, a book written by the now well known F. Scott Fitzergerald uses a variety of social gatherings to portray how it affects the characters who inhabit them. In particular, this can be conveyed in three major ways: The small social gatherings used by Gatsby and Nick's associates, the massive parties thrown by Gatsby, and the funeral of him. Each one reflects a different occasion, and a lot can be told about the main characters and who they surround themselves with. To start with, we'll use the small social gatherings that frequented the book. These are events such as meeting Myrtell or in the book later on, with Jordan and Nick. Or even towards the end, with Tom, Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick. In each of these instances,

The first of which is Nick's first party, "As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knoweldge of his movements, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table-the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone." (Fitzergerald, 46) This revealed two major things, one about Gatsby and one about Nick. Nick came from a different society, one in which things such as knowing the host and meeting them was rather common-place. Meanwhile, Gatsby was so aloof from the very people he hosted that none of them knew where he was, or had any intention of finding him. The next part of the major parties, from another one later on, revealed even more, "Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy's eyes." (Fitzergerald, 119) This applied on a larger scale, to everyone present. They had their own little world, one seperated from reality, a harsh one due to the economic hardships of the time. Instead, this was one of luxury and wastefulness, where you could eat,

Namely, how it influences the thoughts and feelings of those around the characters. First, we have Daisy when she finds out Gatsby is still alive, "She wouldn't let go of the letter. She took it into the tub woith her and squeezed it up into a wet ball, and only let me leave it in the soap-dish when she saw it was coming to pieces like snow." While it isn't learned until later this is Gatsby writing from Oxford, at the time the effect of the letter is tremendous. Its show that this one relevation that he isn't dead is enough to make her nearly call of the wedding. The next one is more subtle in what it shows, as it revolves around Gatsby's funeral, "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." These few sentences reflect both the deep friendship Nick had for Gatsby, and the complete lack anyone else had managed to build with Gatsby. It shows both the small and large effects Gatsby had