Fitzgerald has a very poetic way of presenting language. He uses the same devices consistently throughout his writing.

1. Select three passages from the book (about a paragraph or two in length) that we have NOT annotated as a class. Annotate these passages and identify the language features that Fitzgerald uses. Explain the effect of these features and why he may have chosen to use them.

2. Fitzgerald uses many allusions throughout the novel. Select one of these allusions and explain the connection between it and the book. Bonus: how can you link it to our theme of “illusion”.

“That was it. I’d never understood before. Her voice is full of money – that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell with it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it… High in the white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl….”

Metaphor

– By saying that Daisy’s voice is full of money can imply that she talks very clear, proper and in an elegant way which is saying that is she is from an upper class and she is wealthy. She has always been about money which makes Gatsby more interested in her because of her wealth and what kind of status she would give him.

Ironic – By Daisy being compared to a rose is quite ironic because a daisy is delicate, cute and harmless and where a rose is is full of thorns and prickles that hurt your if you to grab one. So by her getting compared to a rose its saying that she is prickly and will hurt you if you were to get to close. Which is the illusion that she is put under being seen as the beautiful and elegant women when she is careless and selfish.

Metaphor

– The king’s daughter represents Daisy because all her wealth is old money, she never had to work for it it was all just simply given handed to her. She grew up with money, she grew up with white palaces. White places also connects to the beginning of the novel when nick introduces East and West Egg and he comments on the white palaces in East egg. Also by noticing that they are white reminds us that is it/she is plain and empty.

Quote 2:

“His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”

– Comparing Daisy with white again, plain, empty

– Unutterable and perishable,

– When Gatsby kisses Daisy everything that is on his mind disappears, because as of that moment everything he has been dreaming of and hoping for the future for him and Daisy is all in reach and by comparing his mind to gods allows him to be able to dream what he possible can whether is seems impossible he will believe that it is.

Using mind of god relates to the phrase that Wilson said that god is always watching

– ‘…struck upon a star…’ Stars are a reminder of dreams. when looking up at the night sky you so many but through Gatsby’s eyes he only saw one and that was Daisy. Daisy was his only dream and by kissing her he realised that it is all coming true.

– She let down her guard allowing Gatsby into her life

Quote 3

“It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care.”

– Not actually talking about drinking but about what has happening in the people lives around. How everyone is having affairs and keeping secretes. That he is standing back and watching what is happening and what it is doing the peoples lives around him.

– Idiom – To learn to not say anything to any one that will hurt any ones feelings. Fitzgerald may have used this to reassure us that nick is non judgemental, but the sentence Nick says just before is him in fact judging people for hard drinking.

– Everyone is bling because they are all caught up within their own secretes and lies that they tend to not care about what the others are doing. For example Daisy is intertwined with Gatsby that she doesn’t notice that tom meeting Myrtle because she so worried about her own secretes and lies and doesn’t notice and or care what tom is doing.