The Great Gatsby: Chapter 2

Summary In chapter two, Tom Buchanon takes Nick Caraway to meet Tom’s mistress Myrtle Wilson. The three of them head into New York City for an afternoon of fun. Once in town, Tom lets Myrtle shop for things before they go back to Tom and Myrtle’s apartment where they invite a couple--who lives in the same apartment building-- and Myrtle’s sister for a small party. The entire group chatted,danced, smoked and drank the afternoon and night away. As a result of the crazy night, at the end of the chapter Nick finds himself in the Pennsylvania Station oblivious of how he ended there.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: part one ❖ “ A fantastic farm, where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens…” p23 ➢ Represents poverty and hopelessness; a vision of the American Dream that can’t be achieved; Ashes represent the deadness inside of the people who live in the valley. ❖ “The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic-- their retinas are one yard high.” p23 ➢ Doctor T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes are described to be one yard high above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust because he is on a billboard, an ad for an eye doctor. ❖ “A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity except his wife, who moved close to Tom.” ➢ A glow casted upon WIlson and revealed his appearance using with the view of the garage, but because he didn’t know Tom and Myrtle were seeing each other, her secret affair wasn’t visible at the time.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: part two ❖ “The apartment was on the top floor-- a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom, and a bath.” p29 ➢ The repetition of “a small” gives a description of the apartment that Tom and Myrtle shared together. ❖ “... and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream-colored chiffon…” p30 ➢ Gives off a visual color of the dress Myrtle changed into to fit the mood she appeared to show that became more violent to those in the room with her.

SYNTAX ●“The eyes of T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic-their retinas are one yard high.” The dash helps separate the sentence and uses an example of how big his eyes really are. ●“I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so everything that happened has a dim, hazy cast over it, although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun.” The semicolon helps join the two connected thoughts into one sentence. ●“This is a valley of ashes- a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.” The syntax here shows the valley is grey and the people who live there are overlooked by the wealthy people that live by them.

ex: “a line of gray cars crawl along an invisible track, gives out ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.” In this excerpt, Fitzgerald uses imagery to make the cars sound alive by describing them as some type of animal crawling along the roads. By writing that the “men swarmed” it made the men seem more like millions of bugs. He also describes everything in a dull sense like the “ash gray men” which draw negative connotation to them. This quote just brings all the subjects to life in a very dull negative way. Fitzgerald uses diction all throughout the book to reveal this tone which is a bit on the negative morbid side by using words like “desolate”, “sinister”, and “deathless” to set a theme for the reader to pick up on. Even though this story is sugar coated with gold and wealth, the diction doesn’t allow the gradual decay to be ignored DICTION Fitzgerald uses diction throughout this book, especially in chapter two to create a dark and sinister tone that underlies the gold and wealth that, otherwise, distracts the reader from the flaws of society. By describing things as "dull" and "ghastly" he makes the objects come to life as boring clockwork like things.