Figurative Language In The Great Gatsby

The Effects of Imagery and Sensory-Oriented Writing on the Reader

Imagery is the author’s use of descriptive and figurative language to represent ideas, actions and entities in a way that it appeals to a reader’s physical sense (Tutorvista). In both F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the authors utilize imagery and sensory- oriented writing. There are many ways in which they appeal to the readers. They use detailed description of the five senses to create an illusion which makes the readers see, taste, hear, feel, and smell what the characters do. Many senses are used throughout these novels to provide further context; therefore, the readers of these books have a deeper understanding of

them.

He states, “ Why is it the fast-moving fish of the dark current have purple backs and usually purple stripes or spots? The dolphin looks green of course because he is really golden” (72). This description makes the readers visualize exactly what the fish looks like in their heads. It also helps them to infer what color the water is and what effect it has on the color of the dolphin. Hemingway also uses figurative language to help visualize. The narrator says, “He could picture the fish swimming in the water with his purple pectoral fins set wide as wings and the great erect tail slicing through the dark” (67). In this quote, Hemingway uses a simile and a metaphor to describe the fish’s appearance and the way in swims. This helps to understand what the fish looks like and how it moves. Figurative language helps because it gives the reader something that they already know and compare it to what the author is describing, which helps the reader visualize. In The Great Gatsby, it is describing Gatsby’s outfit and it says, “Gatsby in white flannel suit, silver shirt and gold-colored tie” (84). In The Great Gatsby, the bright and flashy colors represent the rich and the dull, dark colors represent the poor. This quote gives the reader a

While both books use sight in their writing, Hemingway includes taste as well. In The

Old Man and the Sea, taste is used to describe the fish that the old man eats. The novel says, “It is a strong full blooded fish’ ‘Dolphin is too sweet. This is hardly sweet at all and all the strength is still in it” (59). This tells you that it is not sweet which suggests that it is bitter. It is tough too since all the strength is still there. Also, since it is full of blood still, it can be assumed that it is uncooked which provide a detail about the taste of the fish. Taste is a difficult sense to accomplish in writing because it takes a great deal of detail, but Ernest Hemingway is successful in this. While The Great

Gatsby doesn’t have a great example of taste, F. Scott Fitzgerald used the sense of sound to explain the party that Gatsby throws.

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses sound to create a sensation where you can hear the sounds created in the book. The novel says, “While the rain continued it had seemed like the murmur of the voices, rising and swelling a little now and then with gusts of emotion” (89). When reading this the sounds flow out of the book and into