We looked at the opening two paragraphs of Chapter 3. Nick Carraway takes us to a new location, describing the extravagance of the parties that Gatsby threw throughout the summer at his West Egg mansion. I have made some comments on these paragraphs, and those that follow, below. My notes are in red and sit amidst the original text.
There was music from my neighbor’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. We talked about this use of simile in the lesson. Gatsby's parties attract the socialites of New York City and the Eggs in the same way that moths are attracted to a bright light. It is, of course, Gatsby's hope that Daisy will one day be attracted to one of his parties. 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 motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. Kieran commented on the use of the word his. This personal pronoun reinforces the fact that Gatsby is a man who has a great many possessions. It is subtle but helps the reader to develop a sense of Gatsby's wealth. On week-ends 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. We discussed the extravagance of the party and the fact that, even in a time of prohibition, alcohol was an obvious and excessive feature in Gatsby's parties.
At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored 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. The language here is that of fantsay - words such as 'harlequin', 'glistening' and 'bewitched' add a magical air to the organisation of food for Gatsby's parties. Fitzgerald's ability to use poetic language is amply illustrated here. Alliterative phrases such as 'garnished wirh glittering..' could be taken straight from a poem. 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. This is the second time in the opening paragraphs of chapter 3 that Nick draws our attention to the young age of the 'female guests'. Personally, I think this is a sign of Nick's disapproval. Chapter 2 reveals the unpleasant situation he found himself in with Tom Buchanan and his mistress, Myrtle. Gatsby's parties are also frequented by men accompanied by what appear to be their young floosies. I find it interesting that Nick's disdain is reserved primarily for the female characters rather than for the men who bring them to the parties. Is Nick a misogynist?
By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, Notice how we become part of the party as Fitzgerald moves us through Nick's narrative into the present tense. This continues during the next part of the description. If you are asked about the ways in which the story is told in Chapter 3, this is a key aspect of the narrative. no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. Nick accentuates the size of the orchestra by repeating the word 'and' rather than listing the instruments in the conventional manner with commas. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. We are back in that magical and exotic mood of earlier. Castille is a region of Spain famous for its colourful needlework. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names. I really like this description. I can imagine a heaving mass of people enjoying themselves with waiters carrying trays of drinks above their heads as they weave their way through the crowds. The fact that these drinks are 'cocktails' adds to the party mood. Notice the apparent casualness of the meetings that take place at Gatsby's parties. The people are starngers to each other - this is not a gathering of those who know each other well, it is a gathering of those who are drawn to the oppulence and extravagance and good-times of Gatsby's parties.
The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. I take this to be a suggestion that people are getting more drunk and, the drunker they get, the more they lose their inhibitions. We see some very drunk behaviour later. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.
Suddenly one of the gypsies, The use of the word 'gypsies' suggests the transient nature of the girls at the parties in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. Alcohol spurs the guests on to do things that they would not otherwise do. The fact that she ' dumps' a drink down is a nice example of the careful choice of a verb to acccentuate an action. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray’s understudy from the Follies. The party has begun. This opening section ends with the shortest sentence so far. Why do you think Fitzgerald chooses to do this?
This is the way you need to approach the text if you are to fully appreciate Fitzgerald's craft as a a writer. As you read through the rest of this chapter, and the novel, make observations and ask yourself questions.
- What is the effect of this word or phrase?
- Why has FSF chosen to describe things in this way?
- What does this add to our understanding of this character or setting?
- How are we influenced by Nick's choice of language?
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