Great Gatsby: How Does Fitzgerald Tell the Story in Chapter 3 
FHow does Fitzgerald tell the story in chapter 3?
Chapter three is written in 1st person narrative, meaning that you only get one viewpoint, the narrators, making is difficult to believe everything the narrator is telling you. Also, because it is written in a retrospective narrative, Nick could choose to give away or keep information for however long he wants, meaning he has full control over what information the reader gets. Just before the start of chapter 3, Nick has woken up after a very drunken night surrounded by people he doesn’t know, thus making the reader question his reliability, making reading the next chapter cautious because you don’t know whether to believe everything that Nick is telling you.
At the start of the chapter, Fitzgerald begins to tell the reader about the lavish parties that Gatsby has, however, he doesn’t mention his name at all in the first paragraph, and the reader is left to assume that Nick is talking about Gatsby. Fitzgerald describes the people that go there to be ‘men and girls’. This is because if he would have said ‘women’, it would have made the whole party more of a formality, which is not what Gatsby wants, he wants everything to be relaxed, and for it to look like he knows as many people as possible, but most of all to impress Daisy, and if she prefers parties informal, then that is what Gatsby is going to make his parties like to try to get her attention. Because nearly the whole chapter is set in Gatsby’s mansion, Fitzgerald uses the whole chapter to describe little parts of it, for example at the start of the chapter, he emphases the word ‘his’, therefore exaggerating how much Gatsby actually owns; ‘his raft…his beach...his Rolls-Royce’, almost as if Daisy was reading it and he was trying to impress her himself. Additionally Fitzgerald pays a lot of attention to the servants; ‘if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butlers thumb’, this shows how much money Gatsby really has, that he has enough to hire
Chapter three is written in 1st person narrative, meaning that you only get one viewpoint, the narrators, making is difficult to believe everything the narrator is telling you. Also, because it is written in a retrospective narrative, Nick could choose to give away or keep information for however long he wants, meaning he has full control over what information the reader gets. Just before the start of chapter 3, Nick has woken up after a very drunken night surrounded by people he doesn’t know, thus making the reader question his reliability, making reading the next chapter cautious because you don’t know whether to believe everything that Nick is telling you.
At the start of the chapter, Fitzgerald begins to tell the reader about the lavish parties that Gatsby has, however, he doesn’t mention his name at all in the first paragraph, and the reader is left to assume that Nick is talking about Gatsby. Fitzgerald describes the people that go there to be ‘men and girls’. This is because if he would have said ‘women’, it would have made the whole party more of a formality, which is not what Gatsby wants, he wants everything to be relaxed, and for it to look like he knows as many people as possible, but most of all to impress Daisy, and if she prefers parties informal, then that is what Gatsby is going to make his parties like to try to get her attention. Because nearly the whole chapter is set in Gatsby’s mansion, Fitzgerald uses the whole chapter to describe little parts of it, for example at the start of the chapter, he emphases the word ‘his’, therefore exaggerating how much Gatsby actually owns; ‘his raft…his beach...his Rolls-Royce’, almost as if Daisy was reading it and he was trying to impress her himself. Additionally Fitzgerald pays a lot of attention to the servants; ‘if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butlers thumb’, this shows how much money Gatsby really has, that he has enough to hire