Language: The True Tale of the Great Gatsby

Language: The True Tale of the Great Gatsby

The Jazz age was a time of glamour, sparkle, parties, music, the extreme rich, the extreme poor, and the exultation of lawlessness; F. Scoot Fitzgerald was no exception. Fitzgerald was enamored by the life of money, status, and beautiful people on a hopeless spiral into self destruction. The moral decadence of America became a prevailing theme in the works of Fitzgerald, taking birth fully within The Great Gatsby.

This novel is brought to life by narrator Nick Carraway who is a moral Midwestern man, infatuated, much as Fitzgerald was, by the parties and pizzazz of the east. Gatsby is a mysterious rich man, taken by love, but caught up in the deviant nature of the days. The morals of the entire cast in this ballet are as whimsical as the sheets of Jazz music that emanated from the musicians of the day. This constant change of character was always more eloquently explained by the language Fitzgerald used, than the actual plot of the story. The language that Fitzgerald used within te story, was more indicative to the actual story than the plot itself. While the character analysis of many of the characters may seem incomplete, by simply analyzing the words that were used to describe the characters and their surroundings, one can derive an in-depth hypothesis about each.

One can first see this use of language by looking at the point of view that the characters are seen in. Nick, the narrator, comes to Long Island, completely drawn by riches. Without even realizing it, Nick equates money to beauty and happiness. Fitzgerald’s use of language through Nick, always describes daisy as entrancing, beautiful, charming, tempting, sumptuous, and many other sexual, beautiful words; ...

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...arn more about the character themselves. It is this that makes Fitzgerald the great author of the Jazz age and The Great Gatsby the great book of this age. Many people have argued that if it weren’t for jazz music, the culture of that age would not have been born. It is not the plot that is the primary bearer of symbolism and themes within The Great GatsbyI, rather it was the language. The language, that like jazz, told a whole story in a few scales. Jazz was the soul of the culture, it was their feelings and emotions on scales and scores. The case is the same with language of The Great Gatsby. The language is the soul of the novel, the lungs through which the theme breathes its life.

Works Cited

F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. New York London Toronto Sydney Singapore: First Scribner Paperback Fiction Edition Published by Simon & Schuster, 1995*