Contents

Contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1

Introduction -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2

Chapter 1

1.1 General Notes on Style and Stylistics ------------------------------------------------------------4

1.2 Basic Concepts and Categories of Linguostylistics --------------------------------------------6

1.3 Metaphor and Simile--------------------------------------------------------------------------------8

Chapter 2

2.1 General Stylistic Analysis on “The Great Gatsby” -----------------------------------------------

---15

2.2 Metaphors and Similes Expressing the Concept of Wealth in “Great Gatsby” by
Fitzgerald ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------20

Conclusion-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------33

Bibliography---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------37

1
 Introduction

The aim of the present research is to examine metaphors and similes expressing the concept
of wealth in the novel “The Great Gatsby” by Francis Scott Fitzgerald. The novel is one of the most
outstanding works of the famous American writer, where Fitzgerald gives the reader an idea of
American Dream, and also persuades us that money cannot buy happiness. As we see, the concept of
wealth is present throughout all the novel. And to make it more expressive, Fitzgerald has applied to
numerous expressive means and stylistic devices, where metaphor and simile play leading roles.

Reading means decoding, and if the reader is not able to understand those “codes” under
which the writer has “locked” the main points of his work, the reader will not get the idea of the
whole book. And our role, as linguists, is to help readers to understand the written texts better, to
grasp the meanings the writer put to his works. So, the topicality of this paper is absolutely justified
as to understand the novel, to get the main characters and Fitzgerald’s attitude towards them, one
must be able to comprehend what the author meant by use of this or that stylistic device.

This paper may be defined as stylistic analysis, as we treat with the style of the writer, the
stylistic means and devices he used. And such an analysis is an attempt to find the artistic principles
underlying the writer’s choice of language. However, all texts have their individual qualities; the
linguistic features which recommend themselves to the attention in one text, will not necessarily be
important in another text even by the same author ( not speaking about that by a different one).

Our problem here is, first of all, to go through style and stylistics, to give its definition, to
find out its main concepts and basic categories, after which we can easily pass onto the concepts of
metaphor and simile and their use in Fitzgerald’s novel.

We divided the paper into 2 chapters, each consisting of several parts.

In chapter one, “General notes on style and stylistics” and “Metaphor and Simile”, we
mainly dealt with style and stylistics, tropes and figures of speech, metaphor and simile. There is
drawn a distinct line between style and stylistics. The subject the linguostylistics concerns with is
defined. You can also find language vocabulary layers in this chapter. Aftermath, the category of
variation is presented, on the basis of which we passed onto the topic of tropes and figures of

2
speech. Their main difference is shown, two realizations in speech; metaphor and simile are
displayed. We treated with these devices in comparison to each other, trying to give sufficient proof
that they are different, though having some common features. We touched upon the problem of
metonymic and metaphoric similes, which is of great significance to not confuse metaphor and
simile.

Chapter 2 “Metaphors and similes expressing the concept of wealth in “The Great Gatsby”
by Fitzgerald”, is dedicated to the main topic of our paper. It is made up of two parts: the first,
comparatively little part, presents the general style of Fitzgerald. Numerous examples are given to
see what parts of speech the writer mostly used to color his work, what type of narration he used,
what symbols he involved to express the basic theme he wanted.

Part two contains the metaphors and similes expressing the concept of wealth in the novel,
that is it is the main part of our work. We went through the whole novel trying to point out all the
metaphors and similes bearing the concept of wealth and luxury. Each example is stylistically
described and analyzed.

The conclusion is our final position to the topic, our deduction on Fitzgerald’s style and
especially that used in the novel.

Bibliography covers all the theoretical and practical books, textbooks, dictionaries, fiction
and poetry we made use of during our research.

3
 Chapter 1

1.1 General Notes on Style and Stylistics

Before coming to the main topic of our research, we find it reasonable to speak about style
and stylistics, its basic concepts and categories.

The term style comes from Latin stylus which means a stick made of material for writing.
The subject of stylistics has so far not been definitely outlined. This is due to a number of reasons.
First of all there is confusion between the terms style and stylistics. The first concept is so broad that
it is hardly possible to regard it as a term. We speak of style in architecture, literature, behavior,
linguistics, dress and other fields of human activity. Style can be applied to everything.

Style is a concept that can be applied to any two or more objects provided; they are
essentially the same while differing in some additional characteristics. ( S.K.Gasparian,
A.I.Matevosyan, 2011:8) Linguostylistics is a discipline that fills the gap between linguistics and
literary criticism, thus being of great importance for philology. The word style , which is both a
linguistic term and a literary critical one, is at the same time widely used in all possible spheres of
human life.

In Armenian linguistic school there has been set 3 types of style: functional, situational and
individual, i.e. style of the writer. We have similar divisions also in English stylistics.

The concept of style, in general, presupposes the existence of objects that are essentially
identical but differ in some secondary features. Thus, we may conclude that the concept of linguistic
style is based on similarity and difference. It is assumed that every linguistic unit is correlated with a
certain object, referent or thing meant. The process of regular correlation between these is called
naming and it is the subject of a certain discipline called onomasiology. Due to this correlation
linguistic elements acquire an inherent property, that is signification , which enables every speaker

4
to use the word in a particular way to denote objects. Thus, through signification the linguistic unit
has the power of denotation, that is it can be used in speech to refer to a certain object.

The subtle relationship which arises between signification and denotation, creates
connotation. These three categories- signification(sense), denotation(what it denotes) and
connotation are parts of linguistic meaning.

Linguostylistics is concerned with the part of linguistic meaning that we call connotation-
those additional subservient properties of linguistic unit, those overtones which are usually of
expressive-emotional-evaluative character.

It should be noted that in the case of style in language these overtones or connotations are
inherent, that is form a permanent part of the stylistic characteristics of a language. In the case of
style in speech we deal with adherent connotations which are evoked when linguistic units are
combined or used in specified ways. Here it is worth mentioning that the word-stock of every
language can roughly be divided into three layers:

 Literary words which serve to satisfy the communicative demands of

official, scientific, poetic messages.
 Colloquial ones which are employed in non-official everyday
communication.
 Neutral words, that possess no stylistic connotation, are suitable for
any communicative situation and form the dominant layer of language vocabulary.

5
 1.2 The Basic Concepts and Categories of
Linguostylistics

The main linguostylistic category is that of variation. Accordingly, we differ the following
types of stylistic variation:

 Phonetic ( e.g. often-oft)

 Structural (e.g. stylistic-stylistical, clothed-clad, etc.)
 Diachronic (e.g. you-thou, your- thy, etc.)
 Stylistic variation proper (to die- to kick the bucket- to pass away- to
join the majority, etc.)

In the case of neutral and literary styles the category of variation manifests itself in language,
whereas in the case of colloquial- both in language and speech. Thus, it becomes clear that the
category of variation can be very well interpreted in term of paradigmatics,which is the associative
level, and syntagmatics, which is the linear level.

In linguistics there are different terms to denote particular means by which utterances are
foregrounded; i.e. made more conspicuous, more effective and therefore imparting some additional
information. They are called expressive means, stylistic means, stylistic markers, stylistic devices,
tropes, figures of speech and other names. (I.R. Galperin, 1981:25) In the European philological
tradition there have always existed phenomena regarded as linguostylistic concepts proper. These
are tropes and figures of speech, the distinction between which goes back to ancient philology, to
the times of Aristotle, Cicero and others.

Both tropes and figures of speech are regarded as manifestations of the category of variation
on the paradigmatic and syntagmatic levels respectively. And their study is based on their numerous
realizations in speech, such as, e. g. , through metaphor, simile, alliteration, pun, repetition, etc..

The term trope was widely used in Russian philological school. Tropes are based on the
transfer of meaning, when a word or a word-combination is used to denote an object which is not
normally correlated with this word.(Ахманова О.С., 1966:481) The aim of tropes is to give

6
expressiveness and emotional character to the utterance. Tropes are paradigmatic phenomena as they
are based on association or analogy.

The stylistic effect of a figure of speech is achieved due to the unusual arrangement of words
and syntactic constructions the aim of which is to enhance the expressiveness of the utterance.
(Ахманова О.С., 1966:492) Since devices of figures of speech are concerned with the arrangement
of words, they mostly function on syntagmatic level, that is the liner level of a particular speech
event.

Both tropes and figures of speech are widely used both in fiction and poetry being
recognized as effective means of figurative language.

7
 1.3Metaphor and Simile

“A newly-discovered metaphor shines like a jewel in a drab vocabulary.”

(Sir Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words)
“Things are best of all learned by simile.”
(G. Belinsky, Russian specialist in literature)

The interaction or interplay between the primary dictionary meaning and a meaning which is
imposed on the word by a micro-context may be maintained along different lines. One line is when
the author identifies two objects which have nothing in common, but in which he subjectively sees a
function, or a property, or a feature, or a quality that may make the reader perceive these two objects
as identical. And the stylistic device based on this principle of identifying two objects is called
metaphor. (I.R.Galperin, 1981:139)

“I was staring directly in front of me, at the back of the driver’s neck, which was a relief
map of boil scars”. (J.D. Salinger)

In the above extract from “The Catcher In The Rye” we see Salinger use of metaphor. Here
we are convinced that the writer really puts two absolutely different objects together, and thus, the
reader perceives the back of the driver’s neck and a relief map of boil scars as identical, though
they have nothing in common.

Let’s review some other examples of metaphor and discuss them.

“Geneva, mother of the Red Cross, hostess of humanitarian congresses for the civilizing of
warfare!” (J. Reed)

Autumn comes

And trees are shedding their leaves,

And Mother Nature blushes

Before disrobing. (N. West)

8
 In both examples above we have the word “mother” which is used metaphorically. In each
of them it is obvious that the authors applied to personification. Mother is considered the start of all,
so, Geneva, being the home of the Red Cross, is called its mother, hostess. As to “Mother Nature”,
the author compares the reddened surrounding with an ashamed woman, who is going to take off her
clothes.

The term metaphor etymologically means transference of some quality from one object to
another. It is widely used to designate the process in which a word acquires a derivative meaning. It
should be noted that metaphors like all stylistic devices tend to have a time of vigor, after which
they loose their force and freshness through overuse and “die”. And language as such is regarded as
a dictionary of dead or faded metaphors. (I.R.Galperin, 1981:140)

Metaphors, like all stylistic devices, can be classified according to their degree of
unexpectedness. Thus metaphors which are absolutely unexpected, i.e. are quite unpredictable, are
called genuine metaphors. Those which are commonly used in speech and, therefore, are sometimes
even fixed in dictionaries as expressive means of language are trite metaphors, or dead metaphors.
Their predictability therefore is apparent. Genuine metaphors are regarded as belonging to language-
in-action, i. e. speech metaphors; trite metaphors belong to the language-as-a-system, i.e. language
proper, and are usually fixed in dictionaries as units of the language. (I.R.Galperin, 1981:141)

An example of a trite metaphor may be seen in the following sentence:

“The Queen is the head of the state”.

The word head is already fixed in dictionaries with this meaning of leader.

Sometimes the metaphoric use of a word begins to affect the source meaning, i.e. the
meaning from which the metaphor is derived, with the result that the target meaning, that is, the
metaphor itself, takes the upper hand and may even oust the source meaning. In this case, we speak
of dead metaphors. For example, conclusion and solution were once metaphorical : Latin
concludere- to shut up, solvere- to unfasten. (S.K. Gasparian, A. I. Matevosian, 2011:152)

Genuine metaphors are mostly to be found in poetry and emotive prose. Trite metaphors are
generally used as expressive means in newspaper articles, in oratorical style and even in scientific

9
language. The use of trite metaphors should not be regarded as a drawback of style. They help the
writer to enliven his work and even make the meaning more concrete.

There is constant interaction between genuine and trite metaphors. Genuine metaphors, if
they are good and can stand the test of time, may, through frequent repetition, become trite and
consequently easily predictable. Trite metaphors may regain their freshness through the process of
prolongation of the metaphor.

“Mr. Pickwick bottled up his vengeance and corked it down.” (Ch. Dickens)

The verb " to bottle up " is explained as " to keep in check", to conceal, to restrain, to
repress. So the metaphor can be hardly felt. But it is revived by the direct meaning of the verb "to
cork down". Thus, we have sustained or prolonged metaphor here.

The constant use of a metaphor gradually leads to the breaking up of the primary meaning.
The metaphoric use of the word begins to affect the dictionary meaning, adding to it fresh
connotations or shades of meaning. But this influence, however strong it may be, will never reach
the degree where the dictionary meaning entirely disappears. If it did, we should have no stylistic
device. It is a law of stylistics that in a stylistic device the stability of the dictionary meaning is
always retained, no matter how great the influence of the contextual meaning may be.

As to simile, it is a figure of speech which consists in an explicit likening of one thing to

another on the basis of a common feature. (S.K. Gasparian, A. I. Matevosian, 2011:159) It is an
explicit comparison( while metaphor is an implicit one) recognizable by the use of the words ‘like’,
‘as’, ‘as if’, ‘as though’, ‘as…as’. It is used both in prose and verse.

“Her emotions were always as unstable as the light winds of April”. (S. Maugham)

“Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat”. (E. Brönte)

“Her hand in mine was like a small wet flame which I could neither hold nor throw away”.
(L.Lee)

It is of utmost importance to differentiate between a common comparison and a simile. I. R.

Galperin states: “Ordinary comparison and simile must not be confused. They represent two diverse
processes. Comparison means weighing two objects belonging to one class of things with the
10
purpose of establishing the degree of their sameness or difference. To use a simile is to characterize
one object by bringing it into contact with another object belonging to an entirely different class of
things. Comparison takes into consideration all the properties of the two objects, stressing the one
that is compared. Simile excludes all the properties of the two objects except one which is made
common to them.” (I.R. Galperin,1981:167)

To be more exact, let’s bring an example where we have an ordinary comparison and
compare it to a simile.

“The eyes of this baby are blue like his mother’s eyes”.

Here there is nothing unusual to consider it a simile but in:

“Her eyes are blue like the eyes of the Sea playing under the sun”;

we have a simile, as her eyes’ color is compared with that of the sea’s, but it is well-known
that the latter cannot have eyes.

Similes forcibly set one object against another regardless of the fact that they may be
completely alien to each other. And without our being aware of it, the simile gives rise to a new
understanding of the object characterizing as well as of the object characterized.

The properties of an object may be viewed from different angles, for example, its state,
actions, manners, etc. Accordingly, similes may be based on adjective-attributes, adverb-modifiers,
verb-predicates, etc.

Similes may suggest analogies in the character of actions performed. In this case the two
members of the structural design of the simile will resemble each other through the actions they
perform. In the English language there is a long list of hackneyed similes pointing out the analogy
between the various qualities, states or actions of a human being and the animals supposed to be the
bearers of the given quality, etc,, for example:

treacherous as a snake, sly as a fox, busy as a bee, industrious as an -ant, blind as a bat,
faithful as a dog, to work like a horse, to be led like a sheep, to fly like a bird, to swim like a duck,
stubborn as a mule, hungry as a bear, thirsty as a camel, to act like a puppy, playful as a kitten, vain
(proud) as a peacock, slow as a tortoise and many others of the same type.

11
 These combinations, however, have ceased to be genuine similes and have become clichés in
which the second component has become merely an adverbial intensifier. Its logical meaning is only
vaguely perceived.

Very often simile and metaphor are confused; there happen such examples which cannot be
identified from the linguostylistic point of view, i.e. the readers are not able to find out whether they
came across a simile or a metaphor. So, we must draw a distinct line between these two concepts.
First of all, we limited these devices as a trope and a figure of speech. Metaphor, based on transfer
of meaning, metalinguistically refers to the tropes, which are identified as “figurative use of words
aimed at introducing expressiveness into speech” ( О.С. Ахманова, 1969:481). Simile, in which all
the words are used in their direct meaning, refers to the figures of speech, “those unusual
arrangement of words, those syntactic constructions which are aimed at enhancing the
expressiveness of the utterance”( О.С. Ахманова, 1969:492).

As to A. Ortony, the difference between metaphor and simile, traditionally overlooked as

distinction between an implicit likening (metaphor) and explicit likening ( simile) of things, bears
deeper character ( A. Ortony, 1980:78).

W. B. Stanford sees the difference between simile and metaphor in the fact that in metaphor
the word meaning broadens, while in simile no transfer of meaning takes place and all the words are
used in their “normal” meaning. He refers metaphor to the language, and simile- to speech, thus
concluding that metaphor logically refers to the tropes, and simile- to the figures of speech (W.B.
Stanford, 1936).

Still, if we essentially examine these phenomena, we’ll see that they have a lot in common.
Maybe this fact serves as a basis to consider simile as a type of metaphor. This consideration may be
found not only in ancient rhetorical works, but also in some up to date works of stylistics (
Античние риторики, 1978:251, К.А. Аллендорф, 1965, D. James, 1968, etc.).

Such an approach may be considered entirely justified if we take it only from the logical
point of view. It is a well-known fact that both metaphor and simile are based on comparison of two
notions, thus being the manifestations of one and the same phenomenon. Yet, the results of
comparison in each case are peculiar; the same logical process gets different linguistic expressions.
If in metaphor the comparison of two notions brings to the transfer of meaning, in case of simile,
words do not bear any semantic changes ( С.К. Гаспарян, 2000:44).
12
 One of the most important aspects of linguistic study of simile is the contrast of metaphor
and metonymy. The functional-communicative study of it has revealed the possibility of
differentiating between metonymic simile and metaphoric simile( С.К. Гаспарян, 2000:62-75).
Their main difference relies on the following: comparison in metonymic simile is based on the
physical characteristics of the objects compared (С.К. Гаспарян, 2000:64) , while in metaphoric
simile comparison is based on inner characteristic features of them (С.К. Гаспарян, 2000:65).

The most outstanding research on this theme belongs to the pen of R. Jacobson. In his work
Jacobson consider metonymy and metaphor as inner and physical relations of similarity or
difference, condensed in them (R. Jacobson, 1990).

According to his theory two types of speech are explained. In one case the speaker is in
difficulty of finding words having contrary meanings instead of the ones at his disposal ( e.g.
“bubbly” or “ginger-pop” instead “champagne”). It is easier for him to find relations of adjacent (
e.g. “bottle” or “hang-over” ), i.e. he grasps only metonymic relations. In the second case, on the
contrary, the speaker can only transfer words sharing something in common and differing in
meaning.

Let’s have a look at several examples of metonymic and metaphoric similes and discuss
them.

“The city unwrinkles like an old tortoise and peers about it”. (L. Durrell)

Here we have a metaphoric simile, as the author compares the slow change in the city with
the slow movements of an old tortoise.

“Now solitaries begin to pass, one, two, three. The light grows and waxes, turning now from
red to green. The clouds themselves are moving to reveal enormous cavities of sky. They peel the
morning like a fruit”. (L. Durrell)

We see a metonymic simile in the sentence “They peel the morning like a fruit”. The author
meant the revelation of the morning view, which he compared to the peeling of a fruit.

“I tried to look stern but forgiving, like one of the less humorous Saints one sees in icons”.
(D.H. Lawrence)

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 This is an example of a metonymic simile. It deals with inner characteristic features of the
Saints. It may be seen through bare eye contact, i.e. by behavior or manners, but it describes inner
side of them.

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour. (W. Blake)

In this little poem by Blake we find the author’s attitude towards time and space, and beauty.

He applied to metonymic simile to express his concept of time, life and the beautiful. He
“limited” infinity putting it into the human palm of hand, and eternity- having condensed in just an
hour.

Summarizing what is said above, we should stress the beauty and the importance of
metaphor and simile in fiction and poetry. They make our speech beautiful, more understandable
and more communicative.

14
 Chapter 2

2.1 General Stylistic Analysis on “The Great Gatsby”

This chapter is dedicated to the general stylistic analysis on “The Great Gatsby”. We aim
at getting a general idea of Fitzgerald’s style after which we’ll start discussing the main topic of our
research.

One of the simplest yet most profound reasons The Great Gatsby is considered as an
American classic is its use of language. Fitzgerald’s language is figurative, which is full of images --
concrete verbal pictures appealing to the senses, by the employment of adjectives. Fitzgerald
frequently uses adjectives to create romantic sensation and visualize the scene and hence heightens
the theme.

Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate
mouth -- but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to
forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen”, a promise that she had done gay, exciting
things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour. (p. 13)
This sentence is densely sparked with adjectives. It is interesting that Fitzgerald often links
adjectives that seem contradictory, e.g. sad and lovely. But this technique visualizes the character
Daisy, and the repetition of the next adjective “bright” seems to imply that Daisy is bright.
However, the word “sad” denies this by its meaning; thus the description gives us a suspicious
impression.

The extensive use of adjectives in sentences like the above ones helps us to convey the
author’s interpretation of the scene and is typical of Fitzgerald’s use of subjective description. Here
is another example:
But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. The most grotesque and fantastic conceits
haunted him in his bed at night. A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while
the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor.
Each night he added to the pattern of his fancies until drowsiness closed down upon some vivid
scene with an oblivious embrace. (p. 132)

15
 There are altogether nine adjectives (constant, turbulent, grotesque, fantastic, ineffable,
tangled, each, vivid, and oblivious) in the passage. These adjectives are all attributives and have
nothing to do with physical attributes. The “constant, turbulent riot” is the background of his dream
and the adjectives “grotesque, fantastic” modifying “conceits” drop a hint that the dream is
inaccessible. A description such as “the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes” helps the
reader to visualize the scene in the manner Fitzgerald intends. The adjective “vivid” make the scene
more real but the adjective “oblivious” works in an opposite way.
Besides his extensive use of adjectives, another prominent characteristic of Fitzgerald’s use
of adjectives lies in his linkage of apparently incompatible nouns and adjectives to produce startling
but thematically evocative effects and his pattern of linking adjectives that seem contradictory. For
example, the “triumphant hat-boxes” of Gatsby’s car and the “blue gardens” of his parties, both
suggest the magnificent but unreality of his vision of self.
As theme is most dramatically expressed through character, Fitzgerald uses the people he
created to convey his message to the reader. We can easily see how Fitzgerald uses such technique
to depict the characters in the novel. When Nick arrives at the Buchanans for dinner, the three
characters are described for the first time in terms that emphasize their physical presence. Here are
Nick’s descriptions:
It was a body capable of enormous leverage -- a cruel body. (p. 10)
It is interesting that the “body” is described as “cruel” here, for normally “cruel” is referred to a
person and not to a body. Fitzgerald doesn’t describe that Tom is cruel but that his body is cruel,
suggesting a separation between his body and himself, as if Tom’s cruel character may assert itself
apart from his will.
The other girl, Daisy ... she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and
came forward into the room. (p. 12)
The adjective “absurd” with the meaning of “ridiculously incongruous or unreasonable”
combines queerly with the adjective “charming” with the meaning “attracting”. “Absurd” seems to
imply that Daisy’s life is aimless emptiness, it is even absurd when her laugh is charming. And the
words “an absurd, charming little laugh” suits her habit, which we will come to know, of gushing
overstatement: “I’m paralyzed with happiness.” More or less, Nick hints that Daisy’s manner may
be crafty.
Fitzgerald produces more elaborate writing with his use of adjectives, and the adjectives he
used help present the illusionary aspect of Gatsby’s world. In a sense, Fitzgerald is very imaginative.

16
 At the very beginning of the novel, the narrator recalls the impression Gatsby makes on him,
which sets the tone of the story:
Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction --
Gatsby, who represented every thing for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an
unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some
heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines
that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that

flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the „creative temperament ‟ -- it was

an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person
and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. (p. 8)
Lexically speaking, there are not a few abstract nouns commenting on Gatsby in this
passage, many of which are modified by multi-syllabic adjectives, such as “something gorgeous,
heightened sensitivity, promises, responsiveness, impressionability, temperament, extraordinary gift
for hope, romantic readiness”. This lexical cluster, indicating personal quality and temperament
rather than outward appearance of Gatsby, leads our attention to the speech and thought of the
character, and his dreamy inner world, rather than on the local realistic world of the novel. The
recurrence of a number of abstract nouns reveals Gatsby’s idealistic aspect of personality, and sets
up an illusive world, which he is eager to hold but in which there is nothing substantial. This seems
to indicate that Gatsby’s ideal is unattainable and his American Dream is doomed to corruption.
Thus from the opening of the story, the narrator sets Gatsby’s idealistic and tragic image.
In English, degrees of formality are indicated by linguistic features at phonological, lexical
and grammatical/syntactic levels. Fitzgerald’s syntactic formality is greatly demonstrated through
his relatively long narrative sentence type. As a consequence, readers are likely to feel that
Fitzgerald’s style of writing is rather more demanding and appears more formal. This formal and
serious register, the complexity of which is vivid in describing inner feelings and emotional
changes, helps to highlight the narrator’s complex feelings towards his era: his lament over the
corruption of the American Dream and the moral decadence, and his admiration for Gatsby’s
romanticism and idealism. (Cooperman, 1996: 96)

On the level of plot, the sophisticated narrator seems to criticize the American Dream, its
illusions and excesses -- he refers scornfully to Gatsby’s “appalling sentimentality” (p. 107) and to
the “foul dust” that “floated in the wake of his dreams” (p. 8). But syntactically, in some of the
17
most beautifully written and memorable lines of the novel, Nick demonstrates not scorn but, rather,
ready sympathy for Gatsby and for those ideological presuppositions that underlie Gatsby’s
ambitions. Nick tells Gatsby’s story in a lyrical style. This lyricism is accomplished grammatically
in the continuation of sentences seemingly reluctant to end. A representative of this syntactic feature
is the appositional phrase, in which his sympathy for Gatsby’s ideological presupposition as well as
his condemnation to aimless pursuit and capitalist aspiration is clearly seen.
For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory

hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s

wing. (pp. 95-96)

This sentence begins with a time-adverbial, establishing duration and “reveries” as what is
being talked about. Then through a second-start “they”, it elaborates itself into apposition, which is
syntactically unnecessary and surplus, but seemingly caused by sensitivity to words like
“imagination” and “reverie”. In the lush ending of the sentence occurs the “fairy’s wing” that is
connected directly to the embodiment of Gatsby’s dreaming, Daisy Buchanan, whose maiden name
is Fay. Nick hereby conveys a magical destiny to Gatsby’s adventure.
Another excellent use of syntactical features lies in Fitzgerald’s employment of prepositional
phrases. Prepositional phrases usually function as adverbials and hence are grammatically
extraneous -- in other words, they could be moved around the sentence or deleted altogether. But the
fact that they are grammatically extraneous does not mean that they are semantically extraneous. On
the contrary, the writer masterly uses prepositional phrases to convey much of the scene-setting and
atmosphere of a text. Consider the following passage in the novel:
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new
red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car
under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off,
leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full
bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the
moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone -- fifty feet away a figure had
emerged from the shadow of my neighbor’s mansion and was standing with his hand in his pockets
regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure
position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine
what share was his of our local heavens. (p.25)

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 In this extract, all four sentences with prepositional phrases have the cumulative effect of
withholding the new information till the last sentence: the introduction of Gatsby, thus creating
suspense.
From this example, we can clearly see that prepositional phrases can produce the effect of
locating a passage in time or space, thus providing a good way to describe the surroundings and
evoke moods; it can also act as a delaying tactic, serving to generate suspense as well as to create
interest and expectation.

To sum up, Fitzgerald has applied to the frequent use of adjectives, lexical clusters,
appositional and prepositional phrases and language formality to create his imagination of American
Dream and his “dreamers”.

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 2.2 Metaphors and Similes Expressing The Concept of Wealth In

“The Great Gatsby” By F.S. Fitzgerald

This part contains the main aim and study field of our research. Here we have examined
those metaphors and similes expressing the concept of wealth which we found more interesting and
eye-catching. Let’s go through them trying to analyze each one very carefully.

On the very first chapter of the novel the reader gets introduced to the contrast between the
West and the East. East Egg is shown as the “fashionable” side of the Long Island, while the West
Egg is “less fashionable” and here “new money” people live.

“Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged
edge of the universe- so I decided to go East and learn the bond business”.

In the above sentence we have a simile, where the word “ragged” means old and shabby.
Normally, we use this word to describe torn clothes, e.g.. But Fitzgerald, by implying this word into
the sentence, opened up before us a scene of the West, being the poorest place to live in.

“I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood
on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets
that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew”.

Here the author has applied to the impression of colors and also to allusion. The books the
hero was to read, were promising: and new money, which comes out from the mint, have a great
resemblance to that.

A careful study needs the description of Gatsby’s house. Fitzgerald used metaphor and
simile to represent the reader the huge and luxurious place his hero lived in.

“My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the South, and squeezed
between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season; the one on my right
was a colossal affair by any standard- it was a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in
Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble
swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden; it was Gatsby’s mansion”.

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 In contrast to it, he puts the house of Nick, an eyesore, even a small eyesore. Through this
metaphor we have the image of their neighborhood: a bulky and beautiful mansion reminding of a
royal palace and a little unnoticeable construction which resembles a hut.

“My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I
had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of
millionaires- all for eighty dollars a month”.

Fitzgerald describes the valley of ashes in a best way comparing the valley to a wheat field:

“…About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the
railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain
desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like
wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and
chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly
and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls
along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the
ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens
their obscure operations from your sight…”

Fitzgerald often used colors to symbolize this or that concept. The green light at the end of
Daisy’s dock is the symbol of hope. However, green may even suggest the money color.

“Involuntarily I glanced seaward- and distinguished nothing except a single green light,
minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock”.

“If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,” said Gatsby. “You always
have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock…… Possibly it had occurred to him
that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever…”

The apartment where Tom and his mistress, Mrs. Wilson used to pass their time is also
described thoroughly as rather a sumptuous place.

“At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses”.

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 The imagination of a long white cake makes an impression of a delicate and a glamorous
apartment house. The apartment itself is a tasteful and a pleasant place to be. The picture of
Versailles garden creates an image of a rich house.

“The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small
bedroom and a bath. The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture
entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies
swinging in the gardens of Versailles”.
The parties given at Gatsby’s house are described in details.
“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and
the champagne and the stars.”
The use of “blue” gives the impression of a dream, and Gatsby’s guests are compared with
moths, as many they are, and the hospitality, which is abundant, is seen through the quantity of
champagne that reaches the stars.
Gatsby prepared for these parties with a greatest care.
“At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of
canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden”.
This metaphor comes to prove his concern, as a Christmas tree and a common garden are far
more different from each other.
Gatsby’s library is as luxurious as his whole house, and after all, we see that the hero has the
library to read, not just has to show.
“On a chance we tried an important-looking door, and walked into a high Gothic library,
panelled with carved English oak, and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas”.
An interesting simile may be found in the passage below:
“One of the men was talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife, after
attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent way, broke down entirely and
resorted to flank attacks — at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond,
and hissed: “You promised!” into his ear”.
Angry is usually used to qualify a person, and a diamond cannot be angry. But Fitzgerald
wanted to show the pressing power of wealth.
Gatsby’s party people are representatives of “staid nobility of the country-side”, and some of
them show superiority to the “new money” people.

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 “And the Hornbeams and the Willie Voltaires, and a whole clan named Blackbuck, who
always gathered in a corner and flipped up their noses like goats at whosoever came near”.
Gatsby’s “gorgeous car” is also of our interest.
“I’d seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen
here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-
boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down
behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory, we started to town”.
Monstrous length, triumphant hat-boxes, labyrinth of windshields that mirrored dozen suns:
all these make up a metaphoric view of wealth and luxury.
The hero himself finds his life full of wealth, something that might change his sad mood into
gaiety.
“After that I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of Europe — Paris, Venice, Rome —
collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting big game, painting a little, things for myself only, and
trying to forget something very sad that had happened to me long ago.”
In many passages Fitzgerald made use of songs, lyrics of which are a part of wealth-theme in
the novel. For example the passage below:
“…The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West
Fifties, and the clear voices of girls, already gathered like crickets on the grass, rose through the
hot twilight:
“I’m the Sheik of Araby.
Your love belongs to me.
At night when you’re asleep
Into your tent I’ll creep…”
Another good comment on Gatsby’s house makes Nicks, when he sees the house all in light.
Its tremendous look makes everyone think it’s a palace or a show set to the world.
“When I came home to West Egg that night I was afraid for a moment that my house was on
fire. Two o’clock and the whole corner of the peninsula was blazing with light, which fell unreal
on the shrubbery and made thin elongating glints upon the roadside wires. Turning a corner, I saw
that it was Gatsby’s house, lit from tower to cellar….. “Your place looks like the World’s Fair,” I
said…”
Gatsby wanted Daisy to see his house and he wished it look as luxurious as possible. He
even fetches a whole “greenhouse” instead of just buying her flowers. No. he wanted her to see that

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he was living fine, and at her time she had made a fatal mistake for not choosing him. Daisy herself
gets too much surprised on seeing his “huge place”:
“…That huge place THERE?” she cried pointing.
“Do you like it?”
“I love it, but I don’t see how you live there all alone.”
“I keep it always full of interesting people, night and day. People who do interesting things.
Celebrated people.”
So, we see that to Gatsby being a celebrity means being interesting to know. This is also an
example of his understanding in wealth and people. He takes Daisy to his house through the front
door to make it more effective for her. And we find a great metaphor used here which impresses us
as much as it does to Daisy:
“…Instead of taking the short cut along the Sound we went down the road and entered by the
big postern. With enchanting murmurs Daisy admired this aspect or that of the feudal silhouette
against the sky, admired the gardens, the sparkling odor of jonquils and the frothy odor of
hawthorn and plum blossoms and the pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the-gate. It was strange to reach
the marble steps and find no stir of bright dresses in and out the door, and hear no sound but bird
voices in the trees.
And inside, as we wandered through Marie Antoinette music-rooms and Restoration
salons, I felt that there were guests concealed behind every couch and table, under orders to be
breathlessly silent until we had passed through. As Gatsby closed the door of “the Merton College
Library.” I could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into ghostly laughter…”
In the above passage we have a simile, too. It is a common knowledge that the French Queen
Marie Antoinette was a famous snob, and Gatsby’s music rooms are compared with those of
Marie’s.
Of great significance is the choice of song performed in Gatsby’s house when Daisy was first
there:
“…One thing’s surer and nothing’s surer,
The rich get richer and the poor get children.
In the meantime,
In between time…”
When Gatsby gives out who he really is, we see his escape from who he has been: all he had
was considered crude and ugly.

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 “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic
conception of himself. He was a son of God — a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that
— and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious
beauty”.
Meantime, a yacht, for example, was a matter of beauty and glamour.
“The transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire found him
physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number of
women tried to separate him from his money. The none too savory ramifications by which Ella
Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and sent him to sea in
a yacht, were common knowledge to the turgid sub-journalism of 1902. He had been coasting along
all too hospitable shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz’s destiny at Little Girls
Point.
To the young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at the railed deck, the yacht
represented all the beauty and glamour in the world”.
Even Gatsby’s guests, most of who he didn’t even know, were looked upon as luxuries. And
Fitzgerald used many devices in describing them. E.g., by implying the metaphor “human orchid”
for one of the women there.
“…Gatsby indicated a gorgeous, scarcely human orchid of a woman who sat in state
under a white plum tree. Tom and Daisy stared, with that peculiarly unreal feeling that accompanies
the recognition of a hitherto ghostly celebrity of the movies”.
The way Daisy feels Gatsby’s partiers after she hears Tom telling who Gatsby really is,
differs from her former perception:
“So the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the disapproval in her eyes”.
Now on she doesn’t approve of the whole thing.
Tom Buchanan, as a representative of old money, is rather a modest man. He doesn’t like
when he is introduced to people as the famous sportsman. He himself says something about him
which characterizes his that point, and his words also conceal some message to Gatsby:
“I’ve heard of making a garage out of a stable,” Tom was saying to Gatsby, “but I’m the
first man who ever made a stable out of a garage.”
Another sample of Fitzgerald’s perfection is the following chain of metaphors:
“Her voice is full of money,” he said suddenly.

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 That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money — that was the inexhaustible
charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it. . . . high in a white palace
the king’s daughter, the golden girl. . . .”
Daisy’s voice is full of money. A voice actually can’t be full of it. So we have a tight
metaphor here, plus the “golden girl” which we can take both as a metaphor ( made of gold ) and a
simile ( having fair hair ). Money jingles in her voice, like the cymbals’ song. A very characteristic
description for Daisy.
Gatsby’s car by which Daisy hits Mrs. Wilson down is called the “death car”: Fitzgerald
meant here the destructive point of Gatsby’s possessions that led only to death and corruption:
The “death car” as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came out of the gathering
darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then disappeared around the next bend. Michaelis
wasn’t even sure of its color — he told the first policeman that it was light green”.
And again, here too we see the use of green color, while the car was in fact yellow ( the
latest one is also symbolic, as it may bring us to the idea of gold).
In the below passage we see Fitzgerald’s materialism:
“They weren’t happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale — and yet
they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture,
and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together”.
Neither Daisy, nor Jay were happy, and neither of them had got profit of the life: “to touch
the chicken or the ale” creates the air of materialism.
Throughout all the novel from time to time the author “reminds” the reader of Gatsby’s
colossal house:
“His house had never seemed so enormous to me as it did that night when we hunted
through the great rooms for cigarettes. We pushed aside curtains that were like pavilions, and felt
over innumerable feet of dark wall for electric light switches — once I tumbled with a sort of splash
upon the keys of a ghostly piano. There was an inexplicable amount of dust everywhere, and the
rooms were musty, as though they hadn’t been aired for many days. I found the humidor on an
unfamiliar table, with two stale, dry cigarettes inside. Throwing open the French windows of the
drawing-room, we sat smoking out into the darkness”.
The search for some cigarettes is called a hunt metaphorically, the curtains are compared to
pavilions through simile, all is dark and of mystic amounts.

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 And in that mystic mood Fitzgerald “tells us” the real story of Gatsby through his own
words. He needn’t keep it secret any more, as Tom has revealed his who- being ( broken up like
glass).
“…It was this night that he told me the strange story of his youth with Dan Cody — told it to
me because “Jay Gatsby” had broken up like glass against Tom’s hard malice, and the long secret
extravaganza was played out. I think that he would have acknowledged anything now, without
reserve, but he wanted to talk about Daisy…
Daisy was an unreachable dream for Jay, and that fact made him more inclined to try to
achieve her. Even the house she lived in was breathtaking for Jay, though for her it was as an
ordinary place, as his tent would be to him. Daisy was famous among young men, and many of them
wanted her out, and this gave birth to a bigger want of her in Jay:
…She was the first “nice” girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed capacities he had
come in contact with such people, but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her
excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone.
It amazed him — he had never been in such a beautiful house before but what gave it an air of
breathless intensity, was that Daisy lived there — it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at
camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms up-stairs more beautiful
and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors, and
of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and
redolent of this year’s shining motor-cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It
excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy — it increased her value in his eyes. He
felt their presence all about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant
emotions.
But his chances were not equal to those young men. He didn’t have money, and his being an
officer helped him to appear in her neighborhood. So, if he ever lost his title ( …the invisible cloak
of his uniform might slip from his shoulders…- metaphor), he’d be left with zero chances of getting
her by his side:
But he knew that he was in Daisy’s house by a colossal accident. However glorious might be
his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless young man without a past, and at any
moment the invisible cloak of his uniform might slip from his shoulders. So he made the most of
his time. He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously — eventually he took Daisy one
still October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand.

27
 Even though he had “no real right” to be with her, he had made Daisy believe that he was
from the same class as herself, having not a well-off family:
He might have despised himself, for he had certainly taken her under false pretenses. I don’t
mean that he had traded on his phantom millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of
security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same stratum as herself — that he
was fully able to take care of her. As a matter of fact, he had no such facilities — he had no
comfortable family standing behind him, and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal
government to be blown anywhere about the world…”
Their next meeting was different as Daisy has a little bit changed her attitude towards him:
“…When they met again, two days later, it was Gatsby who was breathless, who was,
somehow, betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the
settee squeaked fashionably as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth.
She had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever, and Gatsby was
overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the
freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot
struggles of the poor…”
She was rich, and “the bought luxury” (metaphor) set her into the “golden jail”. For Jay she
was fresh, shiny ( gleaming like silver- simile), secure and haughty and far from the sufferings that
only the poor can command. As to him she had no worry or any problem.
Although Daisy’s life was unnatural, it was beautiful and everything in it seems to be
shining:
“…For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant,
cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and
suggestiveness of life in new tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the
BEALE STREET BLUES while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining
dust. At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet
fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the
floor.
The snobbery is cheerful, merry, even the slippers are of gold and silver and the dust they
make out is also gleaming. Rooms throbbed, as though a heart, and people in that world were so
fresh-looking that reminded of petals.

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 It’s obvious that in such a world it would be difficult for Daisy to make up her mind-
surrounded by wealth and well-to-do young men:
Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season; suddenly she
was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn
with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside
her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life
shaped now, immediately — and the decision must be made by some force — of love, of money, of
unquestionable practicality — that was close at hand…”
Factually, it was all the same for her, will she do it for love or for money?
She makes up her mind at last, and Gatsby loses in this game. Not only the game, but also
his past:
“…I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no
longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high
price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky
through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how
raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real,
where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . . like that ashen,
fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees...”.
The new place was strange to him, and he was too far from being aware of who or what
Daisy was ( rose- simile). The possessions he gave birth to ( scarcely created grass- metaphor) were
not to be safe in that community as they didn’t have a base. So, even his materialistic things seemed
to be not real, and all his wishes- dreams that would not ever come true, and finally, he himself was
just a poor ghost, however rich he might be.
Gatsby dies burying his only dream by his side. Wealth doesn’t bring him the happiness he
wished to reach, and his most cherished dream-that is to get Daisy, stays undone forever. Anyway
he leaves after him a huge amount of money and a kind of pride for his father:
“He had reached an age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise, and
when he looked around him now for the first time and saw the height and splendor of the hall and
the great rooms opening out from it into other rooms, his grief began to be mixed with an awed
pride”.
This man, Jay’s father, forgets his grief and sadness on seeing his son’s possessions. It
makes him proud and he even tells Nick his son “could go even farther” if he stayed alive. But he

29
didn’t, and that was the fact. It was not the greatest thing on earth for him to do, but it is clear that
his dad’s sure: making money means all, and nothing else matters.
The luxury that accompanied Gatsby’s parties was absent from his burial: nobody came to
him, except the man who was once wondering in his library. Even Wolfsheim finds his way to miss
his funeral.
“…About five o’clock our procession of three cars reached the cemetery and stopped in a
thick drizzle beside the gate…As we started through the gate into the cemetery I heard a car stop
and then the sound of someone splashing after us over the soggy ground. I looked around. It was the
man with owl-eyed glasses whom I had found marvelling over Gatsby’s books in the library one
night three months before…”
The novel ends up with Nick recalling his old days in the West, all happy and simple:
“I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-that’s and the chatter of
frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the
matchings of invitations: “Are you going to the Ordways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’?” and the
long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago,
Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.”
Nick concludes that in its simple form Middle West is where he belongs, he also sets the
whole story to it, judging that they all were westerners and they all lacked something to be called
real easterners. The wheat, prairies here are meant as wealth symbols (metaphoric usage).
“That’s my Middle West — not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the
thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the
shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn
with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a
city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family’s name. I see now that this has
been a story of the West, after all — Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all
Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly
unadaptable to Eastern life”.
Fitzgerald metaphorically shaped West Egg:
“…West Egg, especially, still figures in my more fantastic dreams. I see it as a night scene
by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen,
overhanging sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are
walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening

30
dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at
a house — the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares…”
Jewels cannot make somebody warm, and nobody there cares for the most important things.
Nick Caraway and Jordan Baker also stay without a single dream which has come true.
Fitzgerald made use of a fine simile here to show the likening of Daisy’s deeds and that of Jordan’s:
“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another
bad driver, didn’t I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were
rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.”
So, she compares the matter of bad drivers with her and Daisy, who end up in a bad
situation.
For some time after Gatsby’s death Nick stays in East Egg, and he always remembers the
luxurious and glamorous parties:
“I spent my Saturday nights in New York because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his
were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant, from
his garden, and the cars going up and down his drive. One night I did hear a material car there, and
saw its lights stop at his front steps. But I didn’t investigate. Probably it was some final guest who
had been away at the ends of the earth and didn’t know that the party was over”.
“Party was over”. This phrase, we guess, means a lot more than it says. It conveys the
meaning of the end of life.
Nick sees East Egg through Jay’s eyes: it is compared to the green breast, fresh part of earth,
and all little houses seemed to be lost on its scene ( melt away- metaphor, to disappear).
“…And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I
became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green
breast of the new world…”

The last passage of the novel bears the same idea of American dream, and Nick wonders
how Gatsby felt on seeing the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock:
“…And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder
when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this
blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did
not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city,
where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

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 Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It
eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . .
. And one fine morning …
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”.

Jay had passed a long way to realize his dream, to reach to the blue lawn, as the author put (
blue symbolizes dream), but he left it behind, in the “dark fields”, dark, and not green as it was in
East Egg, but just in shabby place he was born in.
Now as we are through with all the extracts, having metaphors and similes that express
wealth, luxury and money, we come to the conclusion that Fitzgerald got what he wanted to create.
He had many stylistic devices at his disposal, and he managed to send his most important message
to the reader through them: money cannot buy happiness.

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 Conclusion
The analysis of theoretical and practical material concerning the problem of metaphor and
simile and the examination of their use in “The Great Gatsby” to convey the concept of wealth
helped us to come to conclusion that Fitzgerald made the best use of these two devices. To win
Daisy back, his hero makes a fortune, so that he can compete in the moneyed world of Daisy. But
though his wealth buys him a place in elite society, it is not able to buy him Daisy. Ultimately Jay
becomes a man who has everything but ends up with nothing. All these are reachable for us through
the metaphors and similes that Fitzgerald made use of. Surely, he could have not used these devices
to say what he wanted, but the expressiveness of his speech makes the reader grasp even more than
he meant.
Fitzgerald’s prose is brilliant—poetic at times, making use of metaphor and simile to paint
images of people and places. The reader, coming up the symbolic uses of colors, may be puzzled
and not able to acknowledge their significance at first sight. So, we see the importance of our
research which is helpful for them to realize that green here is the symbol of hope and vitality, grey
represents hopelessness, white ( when describing Daisy through Gatsby’s eyes) symbolizes purity
and innocence, yellow and gold are to mean money and wealth.
Summing up all our research, we find out how Fitzgerald negates Gatsby’s world.
There is a “certain” decency in Gatsby’s house when Nick visits him. Everything in Gatsby’s
world is fake to the degree that even the decency in it is not real. The euphemism “certain” suggests
that idea. “Possibly,” “probably,” and “perhaps” (71, 76) also stand for the doubt, the uncertainty of
the statements they refer to. Fitzgerald hints at the illusionary aspect of Gatsby’s life through these
words, but he strongly points it out when he describes Jay’s house, mentioning the “ghostly piano,
the ghostly laughter, the ghostly heart” that are in the house (69, 72, 112).
Fitzgerald underlines the unreality of Gatsby’s world in ascending gradation, in the sense
that, from simply making the reader perceive the concept through words such as verbs, adjectives
and adverbs, the author names the reality itself. Thus he explains that “none of it was any
longer real” (69). The most striking way in which Fitzgerald condemns and rejects Gatsby’s world,
is through negating the protagonist himself, and applying words with no precise referent to him and
his world. In fact, being the main figure of the novel, one would expect Gatsby to be introduced in
the opening lines of the novel. But such is not the case, since our first encounter with him is in the
third chapter. One could interpret the author’s resistance to introducing Gatsby as his rejection of
what Gatsby stands for.
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 Here, Fitzgerald presents the negation in a subtle way through the delayed introduction of
Jay Gatsby. Finally, when he decides to talk about Gatsby, he does so using negation. Thus, Jordan
Baker, who has been coming to Gatsby’s parties ever since, reports to Nick to “have never met him”
and when they try to find him, “Gatsby was not there,” they “couldn’t find him,” he “wasn’t on the
verandah” (35). These lines give the impression that Gatsby is avoiding his guests, an idea that “he”
and “Gatsby,” respectively the subjects of “was” and “wasn’t,” suggest.
Besides these instances, Fitzgerald’s language presents Gatsby as a person with no identity.
Nick talks of Gatsby as “my neighbor, my host” (31, 33), even though he knows Gatsby’s name, and
no one can say anything sure about him; only “somebody who knew Gatsby” (34) introduced him to
somebody else, saying that “he doesn’t want any trouble with anyone” (37), that there is “something
funny” about him and that Nick can see “nothing sinister about him” (39). All these words and
negations contribute to the “dim background” of Gatsby and are hints at his obscure identity. Gatsby
is a cipher, whose words Jordan “doesn’t believe”: she “doesn’t think he went to Oxford” as he
claims (38). Through these phrases, one could say that Gatsby is nobody, an idea that Fitzgerald
reinforces by putting the word in Gatsby’s mouth himself, when he says to Nick: “I don’t want you
to think that I am just some nobody” (51), and by having Tom call Gatsby “Mr. Nobody from
nowhere” (98).
Another way of condemning Gatsby’s world is Fitzgerald’s presentation of it as an illusion,
an unreality. Here again, employing words of conjectures contributes to asserting this theme. The
verbs “to think,” “to suppose,” “to imagine,” “to seem,” “to feel,” which are often connected to
Gatsby and his world, share the content of uncertainty. They express skepticism as when Nick
objected to Gatsby “I thought you inherited your money”(68). Gatsby himself gives us a strong
instance of the deceiving aspect of his world, when he said that Daisy “thought that I knew a lot”
(114). One can understand these two sentences to imply that what Daisy and Nick believed, is not
what actually was.
Furthermore, through punctuation and syntax, Fitzgerald denies Gatsby’s world. The
frequent occurrence of ellipses in Gatsby’s telephone conversation when Daisy and Nick are at his
place makes his hesitation and his desire to hide something evident, as the following paragraph
implies:
“Yes... I can talk now... I can’t talk now, old sport... I said a small town ... He must know
what a small town is ... well, he’s no use to us if Detroit is his idea of a small town...” (71)

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 Gatsby’s wealthy and unreal world is so negative that it has to disappear. His death and the
peculiarity in the language found at the end of novel prompt that fate. The brevity of Nick’s
conversation with Jordan foresees the end of their relationship, which is an omen of the end of
Gatsby’s world as well (118).
Finally, some rhetorical figures of speech deny Gatsby and his world. The juxtaposition of
“corruption” and “incorruptible” in the same sentence referring to the same person (117), on the one
hand, and of “of course” and “might”, on the other hand, in “of course she might have loved him
just for a minute, when they were first married” (116), calls for some comment. Gatsby cannot be
both corrupted and uncorrupted at the same time, nor is it possible for him to doubt in his certainty,
as connoted by “might” and “of course.” These antithetical constructions attest to the confusion of
his world.
Irony is also a powerful stylistic device in Fitzgerald’s linguistic technique to criticize the
amoral life of Gatsby. In fact mowing a lawn should make it regular, but Nick mentions his
“irregular lawn, well-shaved by Gatsby’s gardener.” The irony here expressed by the contrast
between “well-shaved” and “irregular” underlines that everything Gatsby does is wrong, and should
therefore be avoided. We can perceive another instance of irony in the comparison of the “close”
distance that separates Gatsby and Daisy with that between the star and the moon, and they feel
paradoxically alone in Nick’s presence (71).
Euphemism, another figure of speech, is employed by Fitzgerald to contrast amorality and
morality in the novel. Nick is, at the beginning of the novel, pure and uncorrupted. The language
helps state this when he euphemistically says “I draw her up again closer this time to my face,”
meaning he kisses her (61). But when Gatsby’s contact corrupts him, he can no longer be partial in
his language. He says euphemistically “a thin red circle in the water” to talk about Gatsby’s death,
which he does not want to admit. Therefore he describes him as if he were still alive whereas he
bluntly asserts Wilson’s death in “the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off the grass, and the
holocaust was complete” (123).
The main figures of speech, anyway, which are the target of our research, the two instances
of comparison, simile and metaphor, are manifest in the novel. As far as simile is concerned, Nick
compares Gatsby to a weatherman; the irony of the simile is well understood when we know how
“accurate” the predictions of weathermen are (68). This simile, along with Tom’s comparing Gatsby
with hell (69) suggests that Gatsby is a liar.

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 To end our analysis, we can easily state that Fitzgerald’s writing of The Great Gatsby is a
strong counter-argument against the critics who wrongfully asserted that his writing does not follow
any technique. We hope this study, in addition to the few more which deal with a stylistic analysis
of his literary works, helps his genius to be acknowledged. Let us mention as a final proof of
Fitzgerald’s mastery of language the narration pattern by Nick to characterize the unrealizable quest
of Gatsby’s trying to catch the past. He starts with the accomplished Gatsby, and in the course of the
story, he unravels the making of Gatsby. So, not only does Fitzgerald’s meticulous use of language
present and condemn the amoral world of Gatsby, but his order of presenting the information
participates in the same purpose. Gatsby sprang from nothing (130) and he goes back to nothing as
attested by his tragic end. Undoubtedly, Fitzgerald’s middle-western origin has had a strong
influence on the outcome of The Great Gatsby, in the sense that he presents the West positively at
the detriment of the East, manifested in Nick’s and Wilson’s decisions to go back West for a better
and moral life (94), (Barbara 1975: 63).

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Fiction and Poetry

1. Blake W..- “Songs of Innocence and Experience”

2. Bronte E..- “Wuthering Heights”
3. Durrell L..- “Justine”
4. Fitzgerald F. S..- “The Great Gatby”
5. Lawrence D. H..- “Lady Chatterlay’s Lover”
6. Lee L..- “Young Love”
7. Maugham S..- “Mrs. Craddock”
8. Salinjer J. D..- “The Catcher in the Rye”

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