What Techniques Does F. Scott Fitzgerald Use When Describing the Lights and Colors of Gatsby’s Party?

Fitzgerald uses many different literary techniques and vivid when describing the lights and colours of the party to exaggerate the sense of how bright the lights and colours of his parties are. He seems to say that the brightness of the lights at Gatsby’s party are equivalent to the those of the sun. He writes that “the light grows brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun” he is talking about the sun going down and everything becoming darker, however he then says that “the light grows brighter” which suggests that as the sunlight goes away Gatsby’s lights go up so high that they balance out the light lost from the sun going down. This shoes us just how bright Gatsby’s lights really are, they are bright enough to replace the sun when it has gone down. That gives an impression of the party keeping the night alive and moving which gives a sort of life to the light that Gatsby has at his party.

Fitzgerald then goes on to talk of light and colour in a lot less positive way than he previously has. he describes the guest’s clothes as “gaudy with primary colours” which is describing how bright and colourful even the guests are at Gatsby’s parties. The guests clothes are not nice and even though they consist of very simple primary colours they even manage to overdo this with them then being described as “gaudy”, which means that they are just too bright. This description is strikingly similar to the description of the light at Gatsby’s parties. We get the sense that although both of them are very simple they are just too over indulgent and bright. This also reflects on the guests personalities with all of them trying to be the brightest of them all. Gatsby uses this description i think to try and tell us that everything at Gatsby’s parties scream bright lights and colours not just the lights themselves. I think this is somewhat to help the reader with later descriptions that he makes about light and colour so that they understand that he may not be literally