Rhetorical Analysis Of The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates a love story centered around the mysterious Jay Gatsby and his unquenchable love for Daisy. The novel is set during the 1920’s, an age of over consumption and extravagance. In the passage beginning on page 6 the voice of Nick begins to lay a foundation for the novel through the introduction of Gatsby. The tone of the passage is mysterious and leaves the reader with curiosity about Gatsby’s character, this passage functions as a hook to entrance and intrigue the audience to Gatsby’s motives and goals in living in the new money West Egg. This passage lays both a foundation for Gatsby while also analyzing and judging Gatsby’s personality. The beginning of the passage has a positive …show more content…

The “unbroken series of successful gestures” these gestures represent Gatsby’s lavish parties that were perfectly planned in order to catch the eye of Daisy, the apple of Gatsby’s eye. Within this phrase the sibilance of “s” is used syntactically in order for the phrase to stand out and distinguish its importance from the rest of the passage. The passage continues, “Then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the …show more content…

It continues, “what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams”, the diction of foul also contributes to this dark mood of how Gatsby was consumed by this contamination that changed his personality and character, Gatsby’s quality of hubris makes him blind to violate the moral law. The phrase “in the wake of his dreams” gives insight into his internal character and how he was corrupted. The motif of dream is representative of the American dream. The “foul dust that floated in the wake of his dreams is suggestive” to the fact that his dreams were so big that as he went full speed ahead he left behind all of these foul acts and impressions behind, and in the end those caught up with him and contributed to his fatal flaw. The passage concludes, “That temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.” This section is referring to how Tom became disinterested in the sadness and happiness in other people’s life. The Gatsby that everyone knew was not the real Gatsby, the real man was hidden under all of the extravagance was quite different. This leads to the theme of how you can’t hide from the past no matter what you do to cover your trail. You are still the man who you were, and you

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