Rhetorical Strategies

• Simile: "...he smiled like a weatherman, like an ecstatic patron of recurrent light..." (89).
• "...they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap..." (137).
• "At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower..." (111).
• Metaphor: "The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain" (85).
• Repetition (Anaphora) : "...of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality..." (151).
• Colloquialism: "She ran out ina road. Son-of-a-bitch didn't even stopus car" (139).
• Personification: "As my taxi groaned away..." (81).
• Litotes: "...if i would attend his 'little party' that night" (41).
• Invective: "Listen to me!" (139).
• Asyndeton: "that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it..." (120).
• Imagery/Polysyndeton: "Our eyes lifted over the rose-beds and the hot lawn and the weedy refuse of the dog-days alongshore. Slowly the white wings of the boat moved against the blue cool limit of the sky" (118)

       F. Scott Fitzgerald utilizes several rhetorical devices and consistently implements them into his writing. In doing so, he is able to establish his own complex and descriptive style unique to his literature. A major component of his writing is the use of sense-evoking descriptions to illustrate his, or the narrator's, thoughts. For example, he utilizes imagery by stating "Our eyes lifted over the rose-beds and the hot lawn and the weedy refuse of the dog-days shore" (118). By intertwining both alliteration and polysyndeton into this descriptive sentence, the view that Gatsby shows to the others is thoroughly depicted. Fitzgerald is able to create a mental image into the mind of the reader in a way that is both alluring and clear through the combination of these devices. In addition, Fitzgerald's writing is infiltrated with several examples of comparative devices, including various similes and metaphors.  For instance, he writes, "he smiled like a weatherman, like an ecstatic patron of recurrent light..." (89). By incorporating the use of two immediate similes into one sentence, the author is able to greatly reveal the joy that Gatsby feels when he is told that the rain has stopped. Fitzgerald not only is descriptive and detailed in his writing, but also shows the complexity and mastered use of this particular literary tool. The author also utilizes several other devices that demonstrate his descriptive style, such as repetition. By implementing this tool into his writing, Fitzgerald is able to convey a certain description or image by focusing on one or several points. One example is when he writes, "of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality..." (151). The use of this anaphora in this passage reveals the focus on several forces that Daisy desires to act upon her life to correctly shape it. By utilizing this and other examples of repetition that punctuate the author's work, Fitzgerald's descriptive and complex style is further revealed. Thus, by using several rhetorical strategies and literary tools throughout The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald's detailed style is consistently established.