How Does F Scott Fitzgerald use Language to create the setting and the atmosphere of this extract?

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Gala Slater

Pages 41-42
How Does F Scott Fitzgerald use Language to create the setting and the atmosphere of this extract?


    This extract, which describes Jay Gatsby’s extravagant party is a microcosm of the type of seductive and exciting lifestyle that was lived by those eager to fulfil the American dream in the 1920’s. It shows how the original dream of happiness, individualism and prosperity has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Fitzgerald himself experienced this type of society and uses symbolism in this extract to represent his conflicting feelings about the ‘Jazz age’ and create a typical setting of this kind of society. Referring to the novel as a whole, Giltrow David (from ‘Studies in the Novel’) states that "The style F. Scott Fitzgerald used in 'The Great Gatsby' was influenced by the era's political and social context’’ and I can see that this is particularly present in this passage where almost all the main aspects of the corrupt society in America at this time are highlighted and exaggerated using characters, nature and objects as representations of this. This integration of social background is also present in Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘Tender is the Night’ where he particularly focuses on the lifestyles of the rich. The running, corrupt themes of alcohol and money as being objects of sensationalism are also present in both novels.

    This passage is a pivotal point in the novel because it is the moment when the reader is introduced to the namesake of the novel Jay ‘Gatsby’ and reveals what makes him, superficially,’ Great’. It consists of two separate halves. The first half depicts the preparations for the party, and the second, the party coming alive. Fitzgerald uses this method of division to represent the distinct atmosphere change from the preparation stages of the affair, representing those who work, the ‘corps of caterers’ and those who fairly earned there money in the 1920’s, to when the party is filled with materialistic characters ready to judge the lavish extravagant show Gatsby inhabits. The guests attending the party represent the restless need of society to be entertained and artificially amused by those willing to provide it, and in this case it is Gatsby who succumbs to their insatiable need, both for his own benefit and theirs.
   

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We are guided through the first half of the extract by Nick as a third person narrator, and thus the reader is given a view of what takes place before the guests arrive ‘at least once a fortnight several corps of caterers came down’. Nick gives the feeling of repetition of the rituals described ‘every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived’ and by using this narrative technique, creates a tired ritualistic atmosphere of routine labour ‘on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day’. The tense changes, however, to the first person when people begin to ...

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