Rhetorical Analysis On The Great Gatsby

In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzerald expresses a negative view of the 1920's and the American Dream. He does this using the characters, setting, and symbolism.

Throughout the passage, Fitzgerald adds depth to Nick’s character, establishing motivation for his actions, for example, now Nick’s motivation to accompany Tom to meet Myrtle even though he didn’t want to, was because the trip meant he had something to do and that someone, in this case Tom, wanted him. The passage also provides insight, which explains why Gatsby, a self-centered man who initiated contact with Nick for personal gain, and Nick, a shy, socially awkward man who wants to be wanted and desires an effort-free companion, are

It is made clear to the reader that Nick gains quite an interest in Gatsby. He actually begins to become obsessed with him. The book states, “Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him… It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.”

Fitzgerald utilizes many rhetorical strategies throughout his novel. Specific to the excerpt the rhetorical strategies metaphor and personification are found to be used to strengthen Fitzgerald’s key themes of dreams and reality. Ultimately though, the rhetorical strategies and themes contribute to creating the effect that Gatsby is truly above the average man and that Gatsby, at least to Nick, is some amazing creature that grew from his dreams. The first instance of personification to be used in the passage is in the line, “I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever: I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart” This use of personification has the effect of

After the suffering of World War I in the 1920s, many of the upper class Americans focused on filling their lives with endless joy and concentrating their energies on their own pleasure and comfort to forget about wartime memories. The 1920s era was were money had become the foundation of society due to the American dream, where everyone left behind their horrible past and centralized on becoming wealthy and being the most superlative. As a result, in The Great Gatsby through many rhetorical devices, Fitzgerald uses Nick Carraway as his persona in order to portray that money became too powerful and people became extremely selfish and greedy in the 1920s.

Nick’s father also established morals in Nick that parallel his, to never judge a person based off of first impressions because you don’t know what that person has been through. Nick began to break away from his family traditions with World War I. Following his graduation, Nick participated in World War I, unlike his great-uncle as he sent a substitute to the American Civil War. With a hesitant, but supportive family, Nick sought to move east to New York and try his hand in the

Author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his novel, The Great Gatsby, recounts the story of two love-struck people through another character called Nick. Fitzgerald’s purpose is to show how different characters change throughout the story by using many rhetorical elements like descriptive imagery, the choice of strong diction, and metaphors/similes. The author focuses on the characterization of three main characters which are Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick because they are seemingly connected. These characterizations relate back to the themes of achieving the American Dream that is to be rich and powerful but still have love and a family to come home to every night. Even though many of the characters have changed and evolved throughout the story, some of them

Even Nick projects only what he wants to see upon her, after one of Gatsby’s parties. He sees her distaste for the party and says, “She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand” (114). However, Nick is misinterprets Daisy’s sentiment, she sees an awfulness in the lack of simplicity- the showiness of money repels her and her image of Gatsby in those simple days when they first met fully contradicts what she sees now. But Nick sees only what he wants to see. He thrives on simplicity, and so reduces her character and emotions to something simple enough for him to safely comprehend.

He doesn’t have a lot of money when he moves from the west out to the east. The house he lives in is a small house but from the moment he moves into it he is surrounded by money by having Gatsby’s mansion next door to his. The first few people Nick goes to see are very rich, thus continuing the trend of Nick meeting rich people. Later in the story Nick also meets Gatsby and gets to know him and is offered a lot of rich wonderful things like spending time with Gatsby in his hydro-plane or having lunch with Gatsby and doing many other things with the rich people in the story, yet while surrounded by all this money and wonderful things he gets more and more involved with the problems of the rich people around him. It gets to the point where Nick gets so sick of it all he ends up moving back to the west at the end of the story.

Gatsby is a wealthy man who lives in West Egg. He tells Nick that he is “the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West” (Fitzgerald, 65). He later states, “I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition” (Fitzgerald, 65). This is what Gatsby wants Nick to believe but, in reality, Nick tells the reader that Gatsby was a man by the name of James Gatz and he was the son of unsuccessful farmers.

In the text, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses a wide range of literary techniques to convey a lack of spirituality, and immorality. Techniques such as characterisation, symbolism, and metaphors help to cement the ideas Fitzgerald explores. However, there are some features to this world that redeem it. Which are displayed through expert execution of techniques like characterisation, contrast, and repetition. The world of The Great Gatsby is home to many morally corrupt and spiritually empty characters however, the world itself is not a spiritual and moral wasteland.

First of all, Nick tells us about the impressive amounts of people that showed up: “wandered around rather ill-at-ease among swirls and eddies of people I didn’t know” Fitzgerald uses a metaphor, swirls and eddies, to give the impression of the numbers of guests; eddies are currents that move constantly, meaning that people travelled in groups, like currents, constantly therefore giving the impression of a messy and busy environment. As well, we get to know that Nick doesn’t fit in within the other guests, as he mentions “wandered around rather ill-at-ease” this is because the people in the party are seeking for the complete opposite of what Nick is. He’s attended because of Gatsby’s invitation, everyone else is there without an invitation and a reckless mentality. Additionally, we discover the incorrect gossip that surrounds the characters, as seen in: "Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.” , this proves the guest’s superficiality, as they aren’t sure the gossip is true, or they made it up in an instant, yet they say it out loud to make themselves seem informed and involved.

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man 's needs, but not every man 's greed.” As humans, we work hard in order to have the greatest opportunity to succeed in life, which will fulfill our wants. F Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, utilizes effective language and punctuation in the text, which helps him accomplish his purpose: Illustrate what material goods does to a society. From a rhetorical standpoint, examining logos, ethos, and pathos, this novel serves as a social commentary on how the pursuit of “The American Dream” causes the people in society to transform into greedy and heartless individuals.

Firstly, the fact that he constantly contradicts himself and his ideals may be terribly intriguing to the audience, as even if he seems to have an array of power and influence and presents himself as stable and determined to follow his own rules and force everybody around him to do the same, he does not follow them himself, as for instance, he criticizes cheating yet he has a mistress, and this is shown when he comments that: “nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.” This may make him a fascinating character for readers, as he contains two personalities in his own self; the noble and prestigious aristocrat on the one hand, and the rich and powerful yet rule-breaking bad boy on the other. Perhaps, the instance of antithesis in “black and white” may be used to reinforce this sense of his way of thinking being a dichotomy within one same individual, as if he had a doppelgänger, causing him to be even more interesting to the readers. What is more, the character of Buchanan may be indeed attracting to the audience in that same exact quotation as he is presented by Fitzgerald as extremely racist, an aspect that may have not been rare in the 1920s, considering the idea of white supremacy that existed

Throughout many brilliant works of literature, a common item is placed amongst them: symbols. Symbols are often a key to further understanding a point the author is trying to convey to their readers. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby, he utilizes the literary tool of symbols to illustrate a larger picture for his themes and characters within the novel. For example, the color green plays a prominent role in The Great Gatsby throughout the duration of the novel. However, the color has can have various interpretations.