Rhetorical Strategies

-Litotes: "...not a little sinister..." (5).

-Foreshadowing- “‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one’, he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had” (1).

-Asyndeton: "I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler" (4).

-Metaphor: “What foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams…” (2).

-Simile: “Jay Gatsby had broken up like glass…”(148).

-Simile: "Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes" (86).

-Oxymoron: "...began to eat with ferocious delicacy" (71).

-Symbolism: “Gastby believed in the green light…” (180)

-Symbolism: “But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg” (23).

-Oxymoron: “...began to eat with ferocious delicacy" (71).

-Imagery: "Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight" (23).

-Onomatopoeia: "...I heard the familiar 'jug-jug-spat!' of a motorcycle..." (68).

            In “The Great Gatsby”, F. Scott Fitzgerald makes use of a number of rhetorical strategies. These devices help him get ideas across to the reader, as well as aid him, when adding tone or mood to his work. Imagery, Symbolism, Metaphors, and Similes are commonly used throughout his Novel. These, as well as many other rhetorical devices, help strengthen the text and creates a certain threatening, intriguing, and thrilling styles that entices the reader. For example, Fitzgerald uses Nick to depict Gatsby at a pinnacle part of the novel, describing "Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes" (86). Using such a simile adds to the gloominess of the situation. By describing Gatsby as pale as a dead corpse, Fitzgerald can develop a sullen tone for the reader. Another example of this style of writing is apparent in Chapter 4. Fitzgerald uses Onomatopoeia to describe “…the familiar 'jug-jug-spat!' of a motorcycle..." (68). This Rhetorical strategy helps create a sense of what is happening in the scene. Readers of The Great Gatsby can easily pick up on Fitzgerald’s style, and it proves to be very effective.