Imagery In The Great Gatsby And The Old Man

As long as we can remember, humans have relied on their senses for description and imagery, and this is why authors F. Scott Fitzgerald of The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemmingway of The Old Man and the Sea rely on the imagistic writing style in their books. Using the five senses in their books, they bring the readers into their stories and try to connect the emotions in the book with them. The senses that have the strongest imagery and connections with them are touch, sight, and sounds. These senses are the strongest for the description of each of the scenes, and are used fantastically in the books The Great Gatsby and The Old Man and the Sea. Although some people may not think of touch as the most important sense, it is imperative to understand

In The Old Man and the Sea, we don’t see many examples of sound, but we do see other fishermen that “spoke politely about the current depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather of what they had seen,” (Hemingway 11). This scene helps us understand what Santiago and the boy were hearing in the Terrace around them and enhances the sight in the scene, because as a reader we can picture the fisherman chatting quietly to themselves. Hemingway overall doesn’t directly talk about sounds, but explains it using other imagery in his text. As well as Hemingway, Fitzgerald also uses sound to enhance his scenes, but he directly talks about what his characters are hearing in The Great Gatsby. One example of this is when Tom Buchanan and Nick Carraway go to the “Valley of Ashes” and meet the Wilson’s, and Tom and Wilson are talking when “his voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. Then [Nick] heard footsteps on a stairs,” (Fitzgerald 25). The use of sound in this scene helps the imagery of the room around them with the stairs, and helps picture that someone is walking down them. As a reader, it helps to visualize what is happening, while reading we get a clear picture of Mr. Wilson’s voice fading out in the room as they all look to the person walking down the stairs. Another great example of sound in The Great Gatsby is when Daisy goes over to Nick’s house and speaks with an “exhilarating ripple of her voice [that] was a wild tonic in the rain,” (Fitzgerald 85). This is an incredible quote, not just because of the imagery it promotes, but also because the metaphor is spectacular. As a whole, this quote perfectly sums up why a reader needs the description of sound, because it gives us representation like this quote of Daisy’s voice. Sound helps to enhance our other senses and promote the imagery in a