Read Chapter Three Again Of The Great Gatsby

Read Chapter Three again of ‘The Great Gatsby’. How does he tell the story?

In Chapter Three, both the reader and Nick finally get to meet the famous, eponymous Gatsby. The reader and Nick get introduced into a world of partying, absolute wealth, speculation and the imbalance of society. This can all be shown through the form, structure and language.

Polysyndeton is repeatedly used in this chapter. We often see this technique when Nick refers to Gatsby, especially in this sentence: ‘By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitiful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums.’ Fitzgerald could have just used commas, but the ‘and’ is significant as it displays the wasteful extravagant life Gatsby leads and all the materialistic items he has. It is endless and on-going suggesting is money is eternal and that there is more to be seen of what his money can buy.

Echolalia is the meaningless repetition of another persons spoken words as a symptom of psychiatric disorder. In this context, it’s the uncontrollable repetition of voices and rumours. ‘I think he killed a man’ and ‘he told me once he was an Oxford man’ implies that there is a mystery to Gatsby, as no one seems to know who he actually is and what he does. These rumours, in fact, create a status to which the reader presumes Gatsby is of.

Throughout this chapter, there is a lot of speculation about Gatsby and who he could be. ‘Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once’, ‘he was a German spy during the war’ and someone even ‘knew all about him’. All this gossip conjures curiosity about Gatsby and forces the reader to want to know who Gatsby is and where he is. Gatsby is also show to be an object of romance, along with speculation; ‘there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper in this world.’ Not only is the word ‘whisper’ mystical, the alliteration of the letter ‘w’ creates a soft and majestic tone and creates a mystery towards Gatsby which only reading on can revel.

At the beginning of the chapter, we can see the enormity of Gatsby’s wealth by the use of possessive pronouns. Gatsby has: ‘blue gardens’, a ‘raft’ filled with ‘guests’, a ‘beach’, ‘motor-boats’, a ‘Rolls-Royce’ and a ‘station wagon’. These items are all ‘his’. This effect exemplifies Gatsby’s excessive lifestyle. Because it is used at the beginning of the chapter, we are introduced into a pleasurable lifestyle, drinking ‘champagne’ and partying everyday. There is no substance of character in this life, which perhaps represents America in the nineteen twenties to be a sham. The letter ‘g’ is repeated at the start of the chapter. For example: ‘Gatsby’s’, ‘garden’, garnished’, ‘glistening’, ‘gold’, ‘gins’ and ‘guests’. This creates an effect of harsh metallic gold clanging together. This illustrates how overwhelmingly wealthy Gatsby is and symbolises the exclusive wealth Gatsby holds. The chapter, as we’ve seen, starts off introducing Gatsby’s possessions.

Nick is a retrospective writer. He often looks back at what he says and almost filters his words so he doesn’t contradict that he ‘reserves all judgement’. However it is difficult to tell that Nick is an honest author, or not. Nick says ‘looking over what I have written’ suggests that he is particulate about his choice of words and this makes us sceptical whether we should trust or further study his reliability as an author.

Nick is also satirical about the nineteen twenties. He, throughout the chapter, gives nineteen twenties excessive lifestyle a bad name. ‘Girls in yellow’ suggests that they are clownish and have no sense of maturity and that the women of that time were a ‘mumble’. Therefore this implies society was all over the place and had no sense of direction or sense of maturity to even hold an intelligent conversation.

As the chapter progresses, the reader sees a change in pattern. The reader sees people start ‘weeping’, the tears coursed down her cheeks’ showing how sad people have become at the party. To add on, fights start to break out, ‘she had a fight with a man who says he’s her husband’. We then get to see ‘women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands’. The whole party has become a mess, a disorganised, disharmonious and disillusioned mess. Gatsby has perhaps done this to show the wild excess and drunkenness at Gatsby’s parties, suggesting Fitzgerald wanted to give a sense of both the depravity and the hedonism of the wealthy nineteen twenties America. There’s a sharp contrast between the guests’ bad behaviour, as seen above, and the magical surroundings, ‘the sound of his still glowing garden’. This highlights both Nick and Fitzgerald’s simultaneous attraction and repulsion for the era.

Just before the denouement of the chapter, Jordan and Nick are in a car together and it seems that Jordan is ‘a rotten driver’. Jordan has no intention of being a responsible driver as she relies on the sensibility of surrounding drivers, ‘It takes two to make an accident’. This is a mirror image of the rich not caring for others and the irresponsibility. This car ride foreshadows the death of Myrtle later on in the novel, likewise due to the thoughtless driving of a driver. Although Jordan is uncaring for her surroundings, Nick is especially cautious at this point as he insists she ‘ought to be more careful’ or she ‘oughtn’t to drive at all.’ Nick’s reaction to Jordan’s careless driving is to some extent warning the reader that due to careless driving there might be an accident later on in the novel. ‘Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself’. Which means that the other careless person could be the woman running into the road and is murdered.

When Gatsby finally meets Gatsby, time halts and a mini second becomes eternal. It is as if it’s love at first sight. ‘It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it.’ Gatsby’s smile seems to give Nick an impassioned rush. Time elongating illustrates that they are the only people in the world and in that moment. It is a romantic snippet for Nick, but the focus is more on Nick as Gatsby is Romantic mirror. He would like to see them as alike because they both seem to be isolated. Gatsby stands ‘alone’ at the edge of his party. The wilder the party gets, the more Gatsby seems like an outsider. Likewise, in New York Nick suffers from a ‘haunting loneliness’. He imagines entering the lives of ‘romantic women’ but never acts on his desires. Nick wants to be involved but remains an outsider. Fitzgerald has maybe done this in order to make a link between the two that they are the same man looking for the social connections and social standing of the East Egg community. But they fail at the attempt.

In Conclusion, I think that Nick presents the people and party in the chapter to be a complete meltdown and a foreshadow of the awful events that are yet to come. Nick is an unreliable author and the reader needs to be aware of that and be careful of which parts Nick says to trust.