Polysyndeton In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Born September 24, 1896, F Scott Fitzgerald was raised in a poor family, getting his ambition from his mother who fostered societal expectations within her son. Educated at Princeton with the money of a wealthy, elderly aunt, Fitzgerald could go through and participate in the training ground for young upper-class Americans at the time. It was there that Fitzgerald started to develop his fascination with the rich, which would fuel his future endeavors. However, it was here that his self-consciousness started to grow, surrounded by the wealthiest of the elite, jealousy started to grow within Fitzgerald, and the expectations of wealth placed upon him from not only Princeton but the very Jazz Age itself started to weigh him down. This very nature

The continued use of polysyndeton back to back shoots an element of style shotgun at the audience, ensuring that if by chance the first usage fails to disrupt the reader, the second and third guarantee the reader will become overwhelmed or seep further into the feeling of being out of their element. The feeling of restlessness grows alongside the expression of wealth. In summary, Fitzgerald uses polysyndeton to overwhelm the reader and paint a restless tone and mood due to the Jazz Age's need to express their wealth. Besides filling sentences with polysyndeton, F. Scott Fitzgerald loves to bury evocative diction within sentences to elicit various tones and moods throughout The Great Gatsby. While diction takes various forms, when Fitzgerald is trying to fill the mood with envy and resentment he uses informal diction unbecoming of his wealthy characters. One example of this can be seen through Tom’s attempt to call Daisy to Gatsby’s car, “come on

Along with polysyndeton, Fitzgerald uses figurative language to create a restless image of the Jazz Age and its need to express wealth. Similes and metaphors are the tools of the trade that Fitzgerald uses to create this image in the reader’s mind. One example of Fitzgerald using a simile in this way comes from Nick’s sentiment: The prolonged and tumultuous argument that ended by herding us into that room eludes me, though I have a sharp physical memory that, in the course of it, my underwear kept climbing like a damp snake around my legs and intermittent beads of sweat raced cool across my back. Fitzgerald’s meaning at this moment is to use this simile to call to the reader’s mind a mood filled with Nick’s feeling of discomfort, restlessness, and feeling of being overwhelmed due to being in the presence of Tom and Gatsby’s argument. These serve as parallels to the figureheads of the Jazz Age and Nick. But an average man caught in the middle of these two elites butting heads; head-butting birthed from these men’s need to express themselves and their