The Great Gatsby – Writer’s Techniques (OCR A-Level English Literature): Revision Notes
The Great Gatsby – Writer's Techniques
Fitzgerald employs a sophisticated range of techniques in The Great Gatsby, blending multiple genres, innovative narrative structures, poetic language, and rich symbolism. Understanding these techniques will help you analyse how Fitzgerald crafts his exploration of the American Dream and 1920s society.
Genre and literary influences
Multiple genre elements
Fitzgerald's novel doesn't fit neatly into one category. Instead, it combines elements from several genres to create a complex work.
Tragedy
The novel is often viewed as a modern tragedy. In classical tragedies, audiences witness a noble man's downfall, punished by the gods for his mistakes. A chorus speaks to the audience, offering moral commentary. In a 20th-century tragedy like The Great Gatsby, these elements transform:
- Tragedy now describes an individual's suffering regardless of their class or gender
- The hero's downfall results from society's failures rather than divine punishment, making them a victim
- The chorus becomes the narrator or multiple characters who comment on events
Nick Carraway functions as this modern chorus, interpreting Gatsby's story and offering moral judgements to readers.
In classical tragedy, the chorus was a group of performers who commented on the action. Fitzgerald modernises this device by making Nick a single narrator who serves this function, bridging the gap between the story and the reader.
Realism
The novel contains realistic elements that ground it in historical reality. Fitzgerald sets his story in a recognisable New York, featuring actual landmarks like the Plaza Hotel and Central Park. Whilst he renames certain locations (Great Neck becomes West Egg, Manhasset Neck becomes East Egg, and Flushing's landfill becomes the Valley of Ashes), he incorporates factual historical references such as the 1919 World Series. The frank exploration of sex and adultery adds to the novel's realistic portrayal of human behaviour and relationships.
Modernism
Modernism represents a conscious break with traditional artistic forms in the early 20th century. According to critic Hugh Holman, modernism implies historical discontinuity and creates a sense of alienation, loss, and despair. These feelings emerged from several factors:
- The devastation of the First World War
- The breakdown of traditional frameworks like Christianity that once helped people make sense of the world
- The rise of consumer culture with its shallow values
The Great Gatsby captures this modernist tone powerfully. Gatsby experiences profound alienation when his dream of Daisy collapses. Daisy feels the emptiness of her sophisticated lifestyle, laughing hollowly when she cries "Sophisticated -- God, I'm sophisticated!" in Chapter 1. Tom's restlessness, repeatedly mentioned when he's introduced, also reflects this modern malaise.
The novel presents a 'lost generation' living without genuine values or principles, committed only to illusions or consumerism. The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg's advertising billboard replace the eyes of God, symbolising a world stripped of spiritual meaning.
Social satire
Through irony, exaggeration, and ridicule, Fitzgerald mocks the hedonism and superficiality of 1920s America. Nick's long list of party guests who never really knew Gatsby exemplifies this satirical approach. The old money characters retreat "back into their money or their vast carelessness" (Chapter 9), showing their moral bankruptcy.
However, Fitzgerald's satire goes deeper than mere superficiality. He exposes the tragic human tendency to fail and be fallible. Myrtle Wilson tries to transcend her social position, but fate decrees she must die. Gatsby and George Wilson die too. Significantly, only characters from the lower classes die, demonstrating how they become victims of 1920s American society.
Metafiction
The novel is self-aware about being a work of fiction. Metafiction refers to prose that draws attention to itself and its author in the process of telling the story. Nick is a self-conscious storyteller who refers to "this book" he's writing. He consciously uses pretentious vocabulary and experiments with style and structure, making the reader aware of the construction process.
Literary influences
Romantic poetry - John Keats
Fitzgerald's poetic language suggests inspiration from the Romantic period. Critics argue he was influenced by English Romantic poet John Keats. In 'Ode to a Nightingale', Keats's speaker is torn between death's enchanting nature and life's uncertainty. When Daisy sees a nightingale in The Great Gatsby, she says "It's romantic, isn't it, Tom?", perhaps enchanted by its poetic symbolism. However, this moment ends with the telephone's "shrill" sound, showing how modernity destroys natural beauty and creates conflict between science and nature.
The nightingale in Romantic poetry represents beauty, transcendence, and escape from mortality. Fitzgerald's use of this symbol creates an ironic contrast with the harsh, modern world of 1920s America.
Modernist poetry - T.S. Eliot
Fitzgerald called himself a "worshipper" of T.S. Eliot's poetry. The influence of Eliot's landmark poem 'The Waste Land' appears clearly in the novel. The Valley of Ashes alludes to Eliot's wasteland, and both writers criticise modernity's destruction of nature and meaningful existence.
Conrad's narrative techniques
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness may have influenced Fitzgerald's narrative approach. Like Nick Carraway, Conrad's narrator Marlow is both unreliable and self-conscious about his storytelling.
Structure and narration
Nick Carraway as narrator
Fitzgerald makes a crucial technical choice by not using his eponymous protagonist as narrator. Instead, he employs Nick Carraway, who doesn't know all the narrative facts. This creates several important effects:
- The gaps in Nick's knowledge humanise Gatsby, presenting him as a shadowy figure glimpsed only through Nick's memories
- Gatsby appears vague and romantic in his blurry outline
- Nick's retrospective viewpoint (writing two years after the events of summer 1922) further obscures Gatsby
Nick tells readers about Gatsby's death from the novel's start, giving his demise an inevitable, predetermined quality. This elevates Gatsby to the status of a tragic hero.
Three strands of storytelling
Nick weaves together three narrative threads:
- Nick's own experiences in the East, controlling the chronological order of events based on his memories
- Gatsby's backstory, told from multiple perspectives including party guests' speculation, Jordan Baker's account of his love affair with Daisy, Gatsby's own voice (though not in chronological order), and Mr Gatz's description of his son
- Nick's reflections on the story, adding details as he remembers them (like the long list of party guests), supposedly giving him extra credibility even when these details don't directly relate to Gatsby's story
This layered approach emphasises Nick's retrospective narration and creates a complex, multifaceted view of Gatsby.
The three-strand structure means we never get a single, authoritative version of Gatsby's story. Instead, we piece together his character from fragments, rumours, and partial truths – much like the other characters in the novel do.
The quasi-volta structure
The novel's structure features a turning point or quasi-volta (a term borrowed from poetry meaning a turn or shift). The nine-chapter structure pivots around the central fifth chapter:
Chapters 1-4: Build towards Gatsby and Daisy's reunion. These chapters are written primarily in Nick's point of view. Jordan's narrative about Daisy and Gatsby's past love triggers a shift in narrative style that helps reveal Gatsby's background and humanises him.
Chapter 5: The pivotal reunion chapter. Written entirely in the past tense without interruption from Nick's other storytelling strands, this unbroken first-person narrative intensifies the sentimentality of Gatsby and Daisy's reunion, marking it as particularly poignant.
Chapters 6-9: Present the ramifications of Gatsby's desire for Daisy. These chapters also shatter Gatsby's myth, undermining his glamorous lifestyle and mocking his mysterious identity. Nick incorporates other perspectives (like Michaelis's account of Myrtle's death and George's actions) to shift blame away from Gatsby's façade.
The quasi-volta at Chapter 5 marks the novel's structural and thematic turning point. Everything before builds to the reunion; everything after shows its collapse. This symmetrical structure mirrors the rise and fall of Gatsby's dream.
Nick's position: "within and without"
Nick occupies a unique narrative position, connected to the old money class but not wealthy enough to live amongst them. He befriends people like Gatsby but remains too conservative to indulge in their decadent lifestyles. As he states in Chapter 2, he exists "within and without", on the edge of both social circles. This liminal position allows him to observe and comment on both worlds.
The unreliable narrator
Despite Nick's attempts to appear trustworthy, Fitzgerald makes him ultimately unreliable:
- He relates to readers using colloquial language (dialect and slang in dialogues) but fills his prose with poetic language, creating a jarring contrast that makes the novel challenging to read
- Writing two years after the events, he relies on memory and may have forgotten key details
- He quotes long speeches verbatim, which undermines believability
- He doesn't question whether newspaper reports or inquest statements contain bias
- He includes Jordan Baker's description of Gatsby's affair with Daisy despite considering her "incurably dishonest" (Chapter 3)
Fitzgerald deliberately limits Nick's viewpoint, encouraging readers to fill in the gaps themselves. This connects to literary theorist Roland Barthes's concept of 'Death of the Author', where readers determine meaning rather than writers. It also evokes Wolfgang Iser's notion of the 'implied reader' (1974), which encourages readers to complete narratives with their own interpretations.
Nick's narration might simply add more rumours to the pile of gossip surrounding Gatsby. Can we truly say it provides a definitive account? Perhaps the novel should be titled 'A Great Gatsby' rather than 'The Great Gatsby' to acknowledge Nick's subjective and limited viewpoint.
Language techniques
Poetic style and rhythm
Fitzgerald crafts prose riddled with poetic language, creating a unique rhythmic quality. He describes Gatsby's "punctilious" manner (Chapter 4) and Jordan's "bantering inconsequence" when talking. These pretentious adjectives establish an unusual rhythm that elevates the prose.
Foreign vocabulary and cosmopolitan atmosphere
The narrator uses French words throughout, creating a sense of worldly sophistication:
- "Coupé" for car
- "Hauteur" for arrogance
- "Amour" for love
This foreign vocabulary creates a cosmopolitan atmosphere characteristic of 20th-century America's growing internationalism.
Unusual word choices
Fitzgerald employs the unusual adjective "orgastic" to describe the future in Chapter 9. This word alludes to both "orgiastic" (suggesting wild, uncontrollable activity) and "orgasm" (denoting sexual climax). Both connotations echo the hedonistic decadence of the roaring twenties.
The deliberate ambiguity of "orgastic" captures multiple meanings simultaneously – the excessive, uncontrolled nature of desire and the physical, sensual aspects of passion. This word choice perfectly encapsulates the novel's themes of unrestrained ambition and pleasure-seeking.
Repetition and anaphora
Fitzgerald uses repetition to create poetic rhythm. In Chapter 9, Nick confesses the hold that the East had on him:
even when the east excited me most, even when I was keenly aware of its superiority to the broad, sprawling, swollen towns beyond Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which only spared children and the very old - even then it had always for me a quality of distortion
The anaphora (repetition) of "even" emphasises the East's superior grip on Nick. Sibilance (repeated 's' sounds in "sprawling, swollen", "superiority", "spared") captures the manipulative distortion and deceiving atmosphere of the East.
Biblical and religious imagery
Earlier in the novel, Nick describes Gatsby's body on the air-bed, moving on an "accidental course with its accidental burden" (Chapter 8). The repetition of "accidental" contradicts the predetermined nature of Gatsby's death. However, the verb "shouldered" alludes to Jesus shouldering the cross. Nick elsewhere refers to Gatsby as the "son of God" (Chapter 6), emphasising the predetermined nature of his death as an ultimate sacrifice for Daisy.
Fitzgerald consistently uses Christ imagery to elevate Gatsby to the status of a sacrificial figure. This religious symbolism transforms his death from a mere tragedy into a martyrdom, suggesting he dies for a corrupt society's sins.
Synaesthetic language
Fitzgerald creates mysterious atmospheres through synaesthesia, mixing different senses:
- "Yellow cocktail music"
- "Warm darkness"
- "Pale gold odour"
These descriptions confuse the senses, creating a vague quality that paradoxically brings scenes vividly to life. Readers must imagine what these mixed sensory experiences might feel like.
Colour and music
Fitzgerald uses ambiguous colours to set scenes. "Harlequin designs" could refer to a bright shade of green or a diamond pattern, placing Gatsby's world on another realm. Food on Gatsby's tables is "bewitched to a dark gold", creating rich, deep colour imagery. The description makes food seem like money itself, connecting material abundance with wealth.
Symbols and imagery
The green light
The green light functions as the novel's most important symbol:
- Represents hope and future possibility
- Gatsby specifically lets it symbolise Daisy
- The colour green carries multiple connotations: envy, inexperience, fertility, freshness, sickness, and money
- Connects to America itself in the phrase "the fresh green breast of the new world" (Chapter 9), symbolising the pursuit of the American Dream
The green light's multivalent symbolism makes it work on multiple levels simultaneously. It's both a concrete object (a real dock light) and an abstract representation of aspiration, desire, and the elusive nature of dreams.
Daisy as symbol
Beyond being a character, Daisy functions symbolically:
- Represents Gatsby's hopes for the future
- Potentially symbolises the American Dream itself - beautiful, desirable, but ultimately hollow and unattainable
Gold and wealth
Fitzgerald originally wanted to title his novel 'Gold-Hatted Gatsby'. Throughout the text, gold creates a sense of worth and value. Gatsby adopts the role of the wealthy bourgeoisie, flaunting his material wealth to capture Daisy's attention. Gold represents both legitimate wealth and the corrupting influence of money.
Cars: status and destruction
Cars function as dual symbols of status and destructive power:
- Tom uses his car to assert social and material superiority over Wilson. Wilson's lack of transport means he cannot take Myrtle out of Tom's reach. Tom dangles the car as bait, emphasising his power over Wilson.
- Newspapers label Gatsby's car the "death car" (Chapter 7), suggesting it functions as a fatal weapon
- Myrtle's death (her left breast "swinging loose like a flap" in Chapter 7) reinforces the car's dangerous power and human fragility
Cars in the novel represent the dangerous intersection of wealth, power, and modernity. They're not just status symbols but instruments of destruction that quite literally kill the working class characters who cannot afford them.
Clocks: confusion of time
Clocks symbolise Gatsby's confused relationship with time:
- When Gatsby leans too hard against the clock during his reunion with Daisy, it highlights the pressure he places on their meeting
- He invests all his hopes and dreams in the Daisy of the past, willing the past to "repeat" itself
- Daisy and Nick both think the clock might have broken, suggesting they wished Gatsby could revise time
- Gatsby remembers the exact time elapsed ("five years next November") whilst Daisy vaguely remembers "many years" had passed (Chapter 5), showing their different relationships to the past
Key Points to Remember:
- Fitzgerald blends multiple genres (tragedy, realism, modernism, social satire) to create a complex examination of American society
- Nick Carraway's unreliable, retrospective narration is crucial - he shapes how we understand Gatsby whilst remaining dishonest about his own flaws
- The novel's structure features a quasi-volta at Chapter 5, with the reunion scene as the turning point between rising and falling action
- Fitzgerald's language techniques include poetic rhythm, repetition, synaesthesia, and rich symbolism that work together to create atmosphere and meaning
- Key symbols (green light, cars, clocks) operate on multiple levels, representing both concrete objects and abstract concepts like hope, destruction, and time's passage
Exam tip: When analysing Fitzgerald's techniques, always connect them to their effects. Don't just identify that he uses an unreliable narrator - explain how this shapes our understanding of Gatsby and allows readers to interpret events differently. Consider how multiple techniques work together to create meaning.