Authors pay careful attention to how the words they write add to the story. An author’s writing style can often add an element of description to the story, so he or she will write in a way that best emphasizes certain aspects of the story. This technique is evident in the ending passage of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. In this passage, the narrator, Nick Carraway, reflects on Jay Gatsby's great "capacity for wonder". Many literary devices in the passage help show that point. Fitzgerald's writing style conveys Gatsby’s “capacity for wonder” through his careful word choice, a reminiscent and admiring tone, and using an extended metaphor to emphasize Gatsby’s wonder.
The biggest device that drives this idea is an extended metaphor where …show more content…
One example of this in the passage is his using the color green to describe both the New World and the light at Daisy’s dock. In doing this, he is taking advantage of the color’s different connotations and using them to link the exploration backstory and Gatsby’s life, creating the extended metaphor. Green is a natural color that represents growth, freshness, and fertility. This makes sense in the description of “a fresh, green breast of the new world” (Chapter 9). However, the color has another connotation applicable to both the explorers and Gatsby—hope. The explorers were coming to a completely new region of the world where they didn’t know what they were getting into. Likewise, Jay Gatsby kept chasing all of his dreams, adamantly believing that he could achieve them. Another example of Fitzgerald’s use of diction is in the use of a smaller metaphor at the end of the passage. Carraway says how he and Gatsby would continue throughout their journeys like “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (Chapter 9). He is saying that they would keep persevering towards their dreams, but reality kept holding them