Blog #1 Rhetorical Strategies

• ·         Metaphor: “Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could sucks on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder” (110).
• ·         Simile: “He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breathe, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God” (110).
• ·         Symbolism: “’It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before’” (92).
• ·         Irony: “He (Gatsby) would never so much as look at a friend’s wife” (72).
• ·         Cliché: “All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever’” (36).
• ·         Paradox: “Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one, and yet to avoid all eyes” (15).
• ·         Personification: “The lawn stared at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walls an burning dials—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run” (6).
• ·         Alliteration: “wide open to the warm windy afternoon” (6).

Fitzgerald’s extensive use of figurative language assists in achieving his style that mirrors that of the common person of the time with occasional added dramatic feeling. When the author reaches out of his usual style, he expresses the differences in the described object that separate it from the average society. When Fitzgerald describes that “Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could sucks on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder” (110), he clearly illustrates Gatsby’s realization that he is destined to be great, not just a poor soldier. The sophisticated metaphor is a drastic change from the normal language and vernacular used throughout the book which serves to separate Gatsby apart from the ordinary people as a man who is meant for something greater. Each rhetorical strategy develops a character or a place, making them stand out against the parts of the book that are in the average style that parallels the average person. When Daisy pronounces “’It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before’” (92), the author reveals how shallow “old money” is by using Gatsby’s shirts as a symbol for money. Daisy breaks away from average society by revealing her obsession with money that has been ingrained into her head since she was a child growing up in a wealthy family. The depth of the strategy divides itself from the simplicity of the normal text in order to create the more dramatic style that Fitzgerald utilizes to describe his lead characters. Overall, Fitzgerald’s manipulation of language allows him to develop his characters in a style that is disconnected from the underlying manner.