The description of these magical days and evenings are given to us by Gatsby’s neighbour, who can only watch and marvel at the sheer enjoyment and self indulgence of the guests. His tone is one of wonder at the elegance and excess that Gatsby provides and his guests are happy to exploit. The imagery of the partygoers diving from the tower of Gatsby’s raft or ‘taking the sun on the hot sand of the beach while his two motor boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam’ further suggest the opulence of Gatsby’s lifestyle and decadence of the times. Even the ‘cataracts of foam’ seem to echo the flowing champagne that is so much a part of the night-time revelries. Everywhere is excess.
Gatsby’s Rolls Royce is given majestic ‘bearing’ as it carries the partygoers to and from the city, whilst the little station wagon merely ‘scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. The simile that the car beetled away ‘like a brisk yellow bug’ to fulfil its’ onerous task, would not be lost on the servants of the house who ‘toiled all day with mops and scrubbing brushes and hammers and garden shears, repairing the ravages of the night before’. Again, the rhetoric repetition is put to use with the conjunction ‘and,’ as in mops and scrubbing brushes and hammer and garden shears demonstrating the evidence of the staggering amount of preparation that was needed to maintain the easy elegance that the host seemed so effortlessly to provide.
The diction of the neighbour’s commentary in describing the displays of wealth and excess is both clipped and hurried, his words tumbling out, almost tripping over himself in his excitement to relate the scene. The rhythm of the prose is fastly paced; ensuring that the writer’s intention to involve us in the gaiety and energy of the atmosphere is achieved. In the neighbour’s minutiae he even thrills to tell us of the ‘machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb’. His breathlessness is palpable.
The description of the cuisine provided for the revellers suggests this was not just a buffet, but a Bacchanalian feast. Such is the excess that even the food takes on the mantle of personification. The ‘hors d’oeuvres glistened, the spiced hams crowded against the salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold.’ A veritable seduction of fare was being offered at the banquet. Would one have to sell their soul to partake of this feast? With the cars parked ‘five deep’ in the drive as the guests arrive, the rooms have been prepared, bedecked in ‘gaudy’ primary colours, suggesting festivity and excitement. The ladies dress with the latest expensive fashions, their shawls ‘beyond the dreams of Castile’, this metaphor seeming to echo sultry nights of Spanish drama and passion.
The personification of the ‘bar in full swing’ and the ‘floating round of cocktails permeating the garden’ indicate that the party has begun! The air is ‘alive with chatter and laughter. Casual innuendo and ‘introductions forgotten on the spot’. These observations set the careless tone of the evening.
In the final paragraph the neighbour observes that ‘the lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and the orchestra is playing ‘yellow cocktail music’ a metaphor for the evening to begin in earnest as the night grows darker and the social intimacy follows. With the use of short, breathless, phrases, Fitzgerald heightens the excitement and intensity of the mood. ‘The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath.’ The last sentence of the piece encapsulates the spirit of the text. ‘The group, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and colour under the constantly changing light’.
Fitzgerald, through the eyes and consciousness of Gatsby’s neighbour, has captured the essence of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ with the extravagance, gaiety and ephemeral mood of the times.
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