The Use Of Figurative Language In The Works Of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Classic authors persist due to unique qualities that elevate them from their time. F. Scott Fitzgerald found success for his ability to foster “a close relationship with the reader through the voice of his fiction, which was intimate, warm, and witty” (Keshmiri 78). It begs to question how he managed to organize words that would instigate such distinct feelings in the reader. Despite his novels being in prose, they share many qualities with poetry that utilizes precise word choice, figurative language, and phonetics to enhance the reading, and thus his mere prose leaves an impact on the audience that is similar to poetry and at times invokes the surreal and therefore mirrors the complexity of the human mind. His use of this “lyricism pointedly
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within structural imagery and metaphor . . . provoke[s] readers to both feel and think” (Blazek). Mirroring the romantic lyricism of poetry, Fitzgerald use of dramatic verbs, oxymorons, and extended metaphors bolsters the emotional impact of critical moments within the narrative. Verbs are the central component to all clauses as they rest at the heart of any thought, and Fitzgerald even noted that “verbs carry . . . the sentences. They make sentences move” (Tufte 63). Fitzgerald particularly selected verbs that at times exaggerate the action of the sentence or in other cases could be considered unorthodox for some of their uses, and these particular choosings generally result in an enhancement of the implied action for the subject. The importance of verbs over the sentence cannot be understated as they have a stimulating process on the brain as verbs typically also exist in the brain as an actual action. There is “[m]ounting evidence . . . for the recently proposed theory of action-based language, where the literal or metaphorical meaning of words is mentally simulated by mapping how we physically interact with objects into abstract concepts that relate verbs constrained by parameters of force and motion” (Petersen). Verbs, above all the other parts of speech, have the most direct link to more parts of the brain as it connects with our manipulation of the world and engages the brain in a different manner than an object or a modifier as it represents something we can do. Therefore, when Fitzgerald scribed these passages with a particular attention to verbs, he was beginning to gain access straight to the reader’s entire brain and their own actions.
His use of particular verbs is rampant throughout all his writings, but it brings particular attention to vital parts of the narratives. In the climax of This Side of Paradise, Amory selflessly takes the blame for his roommate. Fitzgerald’s verb and verbal choice magnify this moment:
He quickly recapitulated the story of a sacrifice he had heard of in college: a man had cheated in an examination; his roommate in a gust of sentiment had taken the entire blame—due to the shame of it the innocent one's entire future seemed shrouded in regret and failure, capped by the ingratitude of the real culprit. He had finally taken his own life—years afterward the facts had come out. At the time the story had both puzzled and worried Amory. Now he realized the truth; that sacrifice was no purchase of freedom. It was like a great elective office, it was like an inheritance of power—to certain people at certain times an essential luxury, carrying with it not a guarantee but a responsibility, not a security but an infinite risk. Its very momentum might drag him down to ruin—the passing of the emotional wave that made it possible might leave the one who made it high and dry forever on an island of despair.
Many of these verbs could be switched with more simplistic alternatives (and there are few examples of linking verbs), but Fitzgerald reinforces the impact of this decision though continual use of meaningful verbs that show the character change in Amory as he commits to a decision that could hurt himself. What begins with “recapitulated” and “cheated” ends on “carrying,” “drag,” and “leave.” Omitting the rest of the text would still leave the reader with a near poetic summary of the events: cheated, had taken, shrouded, capped, puzzled, worried, purchase, carrying, drag, leave. They serve as a pulse, aligning with the reader as to add sympathy to the rather unsympathetic Amory, for most people already can identify these verbs with a prior experience. The connotations of these actions force us to recall times when our actions aligned with these verbs, and Fitzgerald successfully calls upon us to sympathize with his protagonist. Tender is the Night uses verbs to reinforce the doting love that Rosemary has for Dick but also the uncertainty of his feelings for her. As this relationship marks a primary conflict throughout the text, Fitzgerald’s verbs heighten a moment of intimacy between them:
Nicole, she came close again, clinging to him. He kissed her without enjoying it . . . She clung nearer desperately and once more he kissed her and was chilled by the innocence of her kiss, by the glance that at that moment of contact looked beyond him out into the darkness of the night, the darkness of the world. She did not know yet that splendor is something in the heart; at the moment when she realized that and melted into the passion of the universe he could have her without question or regret. (86)
This infatuation is continued throughout using words such as “clinging” and the past tense, “clung”; she desperately needs him just as a child grasps a parent. Fitzgerald repeats “he kissed” to show Diver’s repetitive attempts to take this woman as his own. Diver hopes that one day this attempt will end with her “melt[ing]” into this existential understanding where they could consummate their relationship, and he would be released of the guilt. There’s a dreamlike quality in this understanding that if he merely kisses this woman who clings to him so passionately, his infidelity will somehow make sense. Specific verbs and repetition of verbs add to the already dark affair.
A similar craft with verbs continues in the The Great Gatsby. Except instead of simply verb selection, Fitzgerald slips into present tense while describing one of Gatsby’s parties: “By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived . . . The last swimmers have come . . . The bar is in full swing” (40). This makes us feel like at one of these ever-important parties. Manipulating with verb tense is a rare device to add intimacy to a particular moment, but his use of this shows an awareness for the power of verbs on the reader, and it makes an already extravagant soirée more compelling as the reader considers the time that they, too were at these plot-vital parties.
Oxymorons exist as simple versions of paradoxes. While initially, this figurative language appears contradictory, it generally reveals a complexity in the human condition and as such is a staple in poetry as it “creates parallels among words of different classes by their juxtaposition” (Curzan 298). A word’s position relative to those around it has the ability to invoke emotion further from the mere word. Therefore authors use these “irreconcilable opposites in order to examine the ‘startling dualism’ they create” (Curzan 303). Paradoxes consume the mind due to their complexity, and its comforting as this intricacy mirrors the difficulties of the mind. Fitzgerald uses this to humanize his characters who become more relatable as we are familiar with the complexity of human beings.
Merely two adjacent words have this ability to provoke the mind, and This Side of Paradise describes a simple vacation as a “domestic pilgrimage” which shows the difficulties present in even the most local of journeys, but also their ability to have a holy quality. The reader is forced to consider this journey as something greater than a trip. The Great Gatsby’s titular character embodies a more complex concept of the oxymoron, and when Fitzgerald describes Gatsby’s smile he says that:
He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly . . . It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that . . . I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. (47)
Gatsby defines paradox via his mere smile: he can look at everyone and just you, he provides understanding that no one else can, and he can be “elegant” and a “rough-neck.” This is a man who embodies contradictions, and his use of oxymoron shows this duality, and this figurative language makes him larger than life and an exaggeration of a real human being. Fitzgerald’s use of this device reinforces this concept of a complex human, yet relatable as Gatsby represents the titans in our own lives. Tender is the Night provides another example of an oxymoron characterizing as it describes “Nicole Diver's hard and lovely and pitiful face.” (15) Before much is known about Nicole’s difficult life, she’s already described as complicated as she is tough, beautiful, and pathetic, all within a few words. Again, this shows the complexity of human mind and makes these characters the paradoxes that are representative of most of us. While mere descriptions would work, this added paradoxical element complicates this character and reinforces the notion that she will serve as a complex main character.
Like hyperboles, emotions can often not be portrayed at face value and instead, we rely on comparisons in order to ease the ability for the audience to empathize.
Therefore metaphors usually take precedence in poetry as “[o]ne way to talk about abstract concepts is to relate them to now, more concrete objects and experience- to create a conceptual metaphor for what the abstract concept ‘is like’” (Curzan 220). Despite being prose, Fitzgerald’s use of the device fit this description since “[p]oetry especially, often employs novel, more dramatic metaphors that draw our attention and ask us to make new, unfamiliar connections among things and notice new aspects of familiar things” (Curzan 292). Therefore, the use of these devices enhance the emotions that otherwise would not be there and provide greater understanding as to the intimacy that writers felt with Fitzgerald’s writings. Perhaps above verbs and oxymorons, “[a] metaphors role is that of creating the richness of emotion concepts that otherwise would have quite a poor . . . This skeletal structure is then enriched . . . allowing one to conceptualize love in terms of journeys, magic, heat, etc. Metaphor remains important for creating and constituting one’s emotional reality, and conceptualization has actual consequences on experience. (Sauciuc) Metaphor assigns the intangible emotion range to words which a human being struggles to properly to …show more content…
dictate.
This Side of Paradise elaborates Amory’s travel in a vehicle to being something much more predatory as he searches for a woman: “So the gray car crept nightward in the dark and there was no life stirred as it went by .
. . As the still ocean paths before the shark.” While never overt, this metaphor likens the complicated emotions of a young man to one of the most dangerous animals on the planet which succeeds at forcing the reader to reconsider this man who may have ulterior intentions. Here the metaphor helps to create a disconnect. The Great Gatsby uses this power of the metaphor to exaggerate the importance of Daisy to Jay. When they were about to kiss:
[Jay’s] heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
(100)
The extended metaphor of the marriage (“white,” “wed,” “kissed”) which further contains the metaphor of a flower and the divine give acknowledgment to the complicated emotions that come with love. Using the tools of poetry, it allows the reader to feel this emotion that has consumed Gatsby and that feeling is given a surreal description that allows for audience connection as perhaps too have been left without words to describe a similar feeling.
In Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald use of metaphors highlights the difficulty of Diver’s feelings for his wife who had been a patient. It’s described that "Doctor Diver's profession of sorting the broken shells of another sort of egg had given him a dread of breakage" (193). A mentally ill person requires delicacy, especially when they are being treated, and by using this figurative language, Diver seems more compassionate if he views his patients, and eventually his wife, with something that needs extreme care. Not only did he desire to sort them, it may him fearful of further breakage.
The use of these three devices throughout his works perpetuate a poetic quality that enhances the reader’s understanding the complexity of various aspects of the texts that in turn help to tug the reader’s heartstrings more effectively. Noir writer Raymond Chandler made a similar point about Fitzgerald's distinctive voice: “He had one of the rarest qualities in all literature… the word is as charm as Keats would have used it. It is not a matter of pretty writing or clear style. It's a kind of subdued magic, controlled and exquisite, the sort of thing you get from good string quartets. Yes, where would you find it today?” (Keshmiri). Again, it shows the nearly intangible quality that audiences found with his writing that provided connection. More or less, it boils down to that “poetry is a powerful emotional stimulus capable of engaging brain areas of primary reward . . . it is typically unappreciated that poetry . . . represents an ancient, cross-cultural, and emotionally powerful variety within the human communicative and expressive repertoire” (Wassiliwizky). Relying on verbs, oxymorons, and metaphors allowed Fitzgerald to tap into this power, and therefore connect with audiences. When it came to Fitzgerald, “He lives in his sentences, which is where writing lives, in sentences and human sympathy” (Gopnik).
F. Scott Fitzgerald use of verbs, oxymorons, and metaphors strengthen the emotional impact of critical moments within the narrative by being similar to poetry. While it provided connection, this rare emotion took its toll on Fitzgerald who lived a troubled life despite being surrounded by luxury. Therefore, it seems “what happened to Poe is also what happened to Fitzgerald. When a lyric writer cracks, there’s a new kind of dissonant music in the breaking” (Gopnik). His suffering helps us cope with our own.
within structural imagery and metaphor . . . provoke[s] readers to both feel and think” (Blazek). Mirroring the romantic lyricism of poetry, Fitzgerald use of dramatic verbs, oxymorons, and extended metaphors bolsters the emotional impact of critical moments within the narrative. Verbs are the central component to all clauses as they rest at the heart of any thought, and Fitzgerald even noted that “verbs carry . . . the sentences. They make sentences move” (Tufte 63). Fitzgerald particularly selected verbs that at times exaggerate the action of the sentence or in other cases could be considered unorthodox for some of their uses, and these particular choosings generally result in an enhancement of the implied action for the subject. The importance of verbs over the sentence cannot be understated as they have a stimulating process on the brain as verbs typically also exist in the brain as an actual action. There is “[m]ounting evidence . . . for the recently proposed theory of action-based language, where the literal or metaphorical meaning of words is mentally simulated by mapping how we physically interact with objects into abstract concepts that relate verbs constrained by parameters of force and motion” (Petersen). Verbs, above all the other parts of speech, have the most direct link to more parts of the brain as it connects with our manipulation of the world and engages the brain in a different manner than an object or a modifier as it represents something we can do. Therefore, when Fitzgerald scribed these passages with a particular attention to verbs, he was beginning to gain access straight to the reader’s entire brain and their own actions.
His use of particular verbs is rampant throughout all his writings, but it brings particular attention to vital parts of the narratives. In the climax of This Side of Paradise, Amory selflessly takes the blame for his roommate. Fitzgerald’s verb and verbal choice magnify this moment:
He quickly recapitulated the story of a sacrifice he had heard of in college: a man had cheated in an examination; his roommate in a gust of sentiment had taken the entire blame—due to the shame of it the innocent one's entire future seemed shrouded in regret and failure, capped by the ingratitude of the real culprit. He had finally taken his own life—years afterward the facts had come out. At the time the story had both puzzled and worried Amory. Now he realized the truth; that sacrifice was no purchase of freedom. It was like a great elective office, it was like an inheritance of power—to certain people at certain times an essential luxury, carrying with it not a guarantee but a responsibility, not a security but an infinite risk. Its very momentum might drag him down to ruin—the passing of the emotional wave that made it possible might leave the one who made it high and dry forever on an island of despair.
Many of these verbs could be switched with more simplistic alternatives (and there are few examples of linking verbs), but Fitzgerald reinforces the impact of this decision though continual use of meaningful verbs that show the character change in Amory as he commits to a decision that could hurt himself. What begins with “recapitulated” and “cheated” ends on “carrying,” “drag,” and “leave.” Omitting the rest of the text would still leave the reader with a near poetic summary of the events: cheated, had taken, shrouded, capped, puzzled, worried, purchase, carrying, drag, leave. They serve as a pulse, aligning with the reader as to add sympathy to the rather unsympathetic Amory, for most people already can identify these verbs with a prior experience. The connotations of these actions force us to recall times when our actions aligned with these verbs, and Fitzgerald successfully calls upon us to sympathize with his protagonist. Tender is the Night uses verbs to reinforce the doting love that Rosemary has for Dick but also the uncertainty of his feelings for her. As this relationship marks a primary conflict throughout the text, Fitzgerald’s verbs heighten a moment of intimacy between them:
Nicole, she came close again, clinging to him. He kissed her without enjoying it . . . She clung nearer desperately and once more he kissed her and was chilled by the innocence of her kiss, by the glance that at that moment of contact looked beyond him out into the darkness of the night, the darkness of the world. She did not know yet that splendor is something in the heart; at the moment when she realized that and melted into the passion of the universe he could have her without question or regret. (86)
This infatuation is continued throughout using words such as “clinging” and the past tense, “clung”; she desperately needs him just as a child grasps a parent. Fitzgerald repeats “he kissed” to show Diver’s repetitive attempts to take this woman as his own. Diver hopes that one day this attempt will end with her “melt[ing]” into this existential understanding where they could consummate their relationship, and he would be released of the guilt. There’s a dreamlike quality in this understanding that if he merely kisses this woman who clings to him so passionately, his infidelity will somehow make sense. Specific verbs and repetition of verbs add to the already dark affair.
A similar craft with verbs continues in the The Great Gatsby. Except instead of simply verb selection, Fitzgerald slips into present tense while describing one of Gatsby’s parties: “By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived . . . The last swimmers have come . . . The bar is in full swing” (40). This makes us feel like at one of these ever-important parties. Manipulating with verb tense is a rare device to add intimacy to a particular moment, but his use of this shows an awareness for the power of verbs on the reader, and it makes an already extravagant soirée more compelling as the reader considers the time that they, too were at these plot-vital parties.
Oxymorons exist as simple versions of paradoxes. While initially, this figurative language appears contradictory, it generally reveals a complexity in the human condition and as such is a staple in poetry as it “creates parallels among words of different classes by their juxtaposition” (Curzan 298). A word’s position relative to those around it has the ability to invoke emotion further from the mere word. Therefore authors use these “irreconcilable opposites in order to examine the ‘startling dualism’ they create” (Curzan 303). Paradoxes consume the mind due to their complexity, and its comforting as this intricacy mirrors the difficulties of the mind. Fitzgerald uses this to humanize his characters who become more relatable as we are familiar with the complexity of human beings.
Merely two adjacent words have this ability to provoke the mind, and This Side of Paradise describes a simple vacation as a “domestic pilgrimage” which shows the difficulties present in even the most local of journeys, but also their ability to have a holy quality. The reader is forced to consider this journey as something greater than a trip. The Great Gatsby’s titular character embodies a more complex concept of the oxymoron, and when Fitzgerald describes Gatsby’s smile he says that:
He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly . . . It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that . . . I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. (47)
Gatsby defines paradox via his mere smile: he can look at everyone and just you, he provides understanding that no one else can, and he can be “elegant” and a “rough-neck.” This is a man who embodies contradictions, and his use of oxymoron shows this duality, and this figurative language makes him larger than life and an exaggeration of a real human being. Fitzgerald’s use of this device reinforces this concept of a complex human, yet relatable as Gatsby represents the titans in our own lives. Tender is the Night provides another example of an oxymoron characterizing as it describes “Nicole Diver's hard and lovely and pitiful face.” (15) Before much is known about Nicole’s difficult life, she’s already described as complicated as she is tough, beautiful, and pathetic, all within a few words. Again, this shows the complexity of human mind and makes these characters the paradoxes that are representative of most of us. While mere descriptions would work, this added paradoxical element complicates this character and reinforces the notion that she will serve as a complex main character.
Like hyperboles, emotions can often not be portrayed at face value and instead, we rely on comparisons in order to ease the ability for the audience to empathize.
Therefore metaphors usually take precedence in poetry as “[o]ne way to talk about abstract concepts is to relate them to now, more concrete objects and experience- to create a conceptual metaphor for what the abstract concept ‘is like’” (Curzan 220). Despite being prose, Fitzgerald’s use of the device fit this description since “[p]oetry especially, often employs novel, more dramatic metaphors that draw our attention and ask us to make new, unfamiliar connections among things and notice new aspects of familiar things” (Curzan 292). Therefore, the use of these devices enhance the emotions that otherwise would not be there and provide greater understanding as to the intimacy that writers felt with Fitzgerald’s writings. Perhaps above verbs and oxymorons, “[a] metaphors role is that of creating the richness of emotion concepts that otherwise would have quite a poor . . . This skeletal structure is then enriched . . . allowing one to conceptualize love in terms of journeys, magic, heat, etc. Metaphor remains important for creating and constituting one’s emotional reality, and conceptualization has actual consequences on experience. (Sauciuc) Metaphor assigns the intangible emotion range to words which a human being struggles to properly to …show more content…
dictate.
This Side of Paradise elaborates Amory’s travel in a vehicle to being something much more predatory as he searches for a woman: “So the gray car crept nightward in the dark and there was no life stirred as it went by .
. . As the still ocean paths before the shark.” While never overt, this metaphor likens the complicated emotions of a young man to one of the most dangerous animals on the planet which succeeds at forcing the reader to reconsider this man who may have ulterior intentions. Here the metaphor helps to create a disconnect. The Great Gatsby uses this power of the metaphor to exaggerate the importance of Daisy to Jay. When they were about to kiss:
[Jay’s] heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
(100)
The extended metaphor of the marriage (“white,” “wed,” “kissed”) which further contains the metaphor of a flower and the divine give acknowledgment to the complicated emotions that come with love. Using the tools of poetry, it allows the reader to feel this emotion that has consumed Gatsby and that feeling is given a surreal description that allows for audience connection as perhaps too have been left without words to describe a similar feeling.
In Tender is the Night, Fitzgerald use of metaphors highlights the difficulty of Diver’s feelings for his wife who had been a patient. It’s described that "Doctor Diver's profession of sorting the broken shells of another sort of egg had given him a dread of breakage" (193). A mentally ill person requires delicacy, especially when they are being treated, and by using this figurative language, Diver seems more compassionate if he views his patients, and eventually his wife, with something that needs extreme care. Not only did he desire to sort them, it may him fearful of further breakage.
The use of these three devices throughout his works perpetuate a poetic quality that enhances the reader’s understanding the complexity of various aspects of the texts that in turn help to tug the reader’s heartstrings more effectively. Noir writer Raymond Chandler made a similar point about Fitzgerald's distinctive voice: “He had one of the rarest qualities in all literature… the word is as charm as Keats would have used it. It is not a matter of pretty writing or clear style. It's a kind of subdued magic, controlled and exquisite, the sort of thing you get from good string quartets. Yes, where would you find it today?” (Keshmiri). Again, it shows the nearly intangible quality that audiences found with his writing that provided connection. More or less, it boils down to that “poetry is a powerful emotional stimulus capable of engaging brain areas of primary reward . . . it is typically unappreciated that poetry . . . represents an ancient, cross-cultural, and emotionally powerful variety within the human communicative and expressive repertoire” (Wassiliwizky). Relying on verbs, oxymorons, and metaphors allowed Fitzgerald to tap into this power, and therefore connect with audiences. When it came to Fitzgerald, “He lives in his sentences, which is where writing lives, in sentences and human sympathy” (Gopnik).
F. Scott Fitzgerald use of verbs, oxymorons, and metaphors strengthen the emotional impact of critical moments within the narrative by being similar to poetry. While it provided connection, this rare emotion took its toll on Fitzgerald who lived a troubled life despite being surrounded by luxury. Therefore, it seems “what happened to Poe is also what happened to Fitzgerald. When a lyric writer cracks, there’s a new kind of dissonant music in the breaking” (Gopnik). His suffering helps us cope with our own.