The Great Gatsby Pgs. 12-21

              As the plot of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby slowly begins to unfurl, some very interesting and potentially problematic occurrences come into play that have left me with many questions as to how the story will progress. To begin with, I am already starting to see that Daisy will most likely be a much more complicated character than the immature, childish, and spoiled young woman that I had at first assumed her to be. Now that Miss Baker has informed Nick that Daisy’s husband, Tom Buchanan, has a mistress in New York, I now feel that I judged her far too quickly, and her life must be much more marred and troubled than I first imagined. Furthermore, I am already outraged by the sheer repulsiveness and classless convictions of Tom Buchanan. His hubris is remarkable: he is so confident, proud, selfish, and conceited that it literally disgusts me.  I am also very curious to learn more about the seemingly odd character Miss Jordan Baker, and I wonder if she will gradually become a very significant character in the story or even a love interest of Nick Carraway. Most prominently, however, I am becoming very eager to learn about Gatsby, considering that the book is named after him, and yet I have no idea who he is! While Fitzgerald has crafted many intriguing characters within this story, I am anxious to see how their lives and actions will intertwine to create one ingenious plot.

                                      Tom Buchanan's hubris may become his downfall.

                While reading this portion of The Great Gatsby, I couldn’t help but take note of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s incredibly interesting and impressive writing style. For starters, I have noticed that Fitzgerald has mastered indirect characterization, which is evident in his remarkable way of revealing the true personalities and values of his characters through their words and actions. For example, after Tom Buchanan openly boasts to Nick about his wealth and insists on the inferiority of other races to his guests at the dinner table, I was able to easily determine that he is a very self-absorbed man who bears an ever-present air of superiority. While this implementation of indirect characterization seems to be in contrast to Edith Wharton’s tendency to use direct characterization in The House of Mirth, I find that ascertaining the quality of a character by his or her thoughts or actions can be just as effective as a direct characterization can be. Fitzgerald has also crafted very vivid and effective similes such as when he describes Daisy’s beauty when illuminated by the fading sunlight and remarks, “…then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk (Fitzgerald, 14). This simile not only underscores the sheer beauty of Daisy but also emphasizes the fact that a glimpse of her face can be a source of pleasantness which one is reluctant to part with. Of course, Fitzgerald’s elevated diction has also persisted throughout this section of the book, and I can assume that he will incorporate his very astute vocabulary into the story throughout the novel. Perhaps one of the most powerful aspects of Fitzgerald’s writing style, however, is his incredible imagery. While imagery is an essential element to nearly every work, I find Fitzgerald’s use of such a technique to be particularly critical, for purposeful descriptions of the setting always serve as testimony to the wealth of many of the characters. In addition, such imagery simply adds a little flavor to the story and arrests the reader’s attention, such as when Carraway observes “a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life” (Fitzgerald, 20). Clearly, Fitzgerald has already established within the first chapter of The Great Gatsby that he is a master of many literary techniques and has created his own unique and brilliant writing style.