Throughout the novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
consistently manipulates diction to portray a certain tone that he desires at
that point in the novel. One can easily see Fitzgerald’s mastery of this art by
looking at the multitude of volta in tone throughout the novel. At the
beginning of the novel, Nick regards Tom Buchanan with admiration and
intimidation as he describes him as “two shining arrogant eyes had established
dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning
aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swanks of his riding clothes
could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening
boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of
muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat” (7), but after
Gatsby’s death, Nick regards Tom with disgust when he says, “I couldn’t forgive
him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely
justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people,
Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into
their money or their cast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them
together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made” (179). Fitzgerald
purposely employs the word “careless,” or variations of it, to reveal his
disgusted tone towards the wealthy in the 1920’s; he believes them to be
careless, wasteful people, with little regard to anyone else or the consequences
of their actions. Another volta is in the way Gatsby’s house is portrayed from
the beginning of the novel to after his death. Nick describes Gatsby’s house
and his parties as “gleaming” and “dazzling” (179), but after Gatsby’s death,
he sees the house as “empty” and a “huge incoherent failure” (179). Fitzgerald uses Gatsby’s house and Gatsby to
illustrate his melancholy tone towards the American Dream. When Gatsby was
alive, his house was alive and bright, always filled with people, a happy
place. After his death, Gatsby’s house is “empty” (179), no longer a place of
happiness and liveliness, but a “huge” (179), “sprawling” (176), desolate
wasteland. This is synonymous with the American Dream; The Roaring 20’s in the U.S.
was the height of the American Dream—people, like Gatsby, were able to make
themselves into whoever they desired to be. But this height of the American
Dream essentially “dies” in 1929 with the start of the Great Depression—similarly
to how when Gatsby dies, his house becomes a desolate wasteland—America becomes
a desolate wasteland with the death of the American Dream in the start of the
Great Depression.
I agree that the author reveals the true colors of the wealthy in order to expose his disgust of the new era. Daisy and Tom did not seem to have any remorse for not coming to Gatsby’s funeral and acted as if nothing had happened. I was surprised when you point out the imagery of the house in the beginning of the novel and at the end, I did not notice it. I also agree that the American Dream becomes nothing in the coming of the Great Depression. The connection to Gatsby’s “desolate wasteland” to America in the Great Depression was also something I did not notice. Before the Depression the standard of living was rising and Gatsby’s house was a party. Then when the Depression hit many were left unemployed and with nothing and Gatsby had died along with the American Dream.
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