How does Fitzgerald use details of setting and imagery to establish a mood in another chapter?
May 1, 2022•560 words
Extract:
There was music from my neighbour’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.
Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb.
At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough coloured lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d’oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.
Analysis:
This particular extract is set at Gatsby’s establishment. The author manages to create a rich atmosphere and a rather extravagant mood in contrast to the mood and atmosphere created of the “Valley of Ashes” in chapter 2 where the we, the readers, are presented with a more dismal mood and an uncomfortable atmosphere. Fitzgerald uses simile and imagery to create a sense of prosperity and luxury. Fitzgerald first uses a simile, “men and girls came and went like moths” to give the reader an idea of how characters are attracted to the beauty and richness of the establishment. An example of how Fitzgerald was able to use imagery to create a rich atmosphere would be where it says “On weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus.” This creates a rich mood as a Rolce Royce symbolises success and seeing it being compared to an “omnibus” exemplifies the idea that Fitzgerald has created an “extravagant mood” or a “rich atmosphere”. Furthermore, Fitzgerald is able to further use imagery to create a rich mood when it says “I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats” This is because we are presented with the image that he has 2 motorboats and his own raft and he permits guests to use it freely which further supports the idea that the mood is “extravagant” and “rich.” These phrases from the extract show us how Fitzgerald was able to create a rich and extravagant atmosphere using imagery.