Syntax

Syntax

• ·      Exclamatory Sentence: “Sophisticated – God, I’m sophisticated!” (Fitzgerald 17).
• ·      Polysyndeton and Epistrophe: “And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything” (17).

Daisy seems overly obsessed with becoming “sophisticated” and maintaining her high status that comes with living in the East Egg. By possessing a pretentious attitude and claiming that she is the most knowledgeable and experienced person in the world, she is trying to make the type of person she wants to be – an aristocratic, high-class New York woman – a reality. Even more significantly, the exclamation reveals that Daisy is indeed quite unhappy with her life because she repeats the word “sophisticated” twice, as if she is reassuring herself that she is of the upper-class. Fitzgerald embeds this quote into the novel early on in order to set Daisy up as a woman who lacks self-confidence, is unsatisfied in life, and desperately wants to be seen as high-class because these ideas will change how the reader views other events that occur with Daisy, such as her refusal to deny loving Tom and her affair with Gatsby. Her repetition of the prefix “every” and the word “everything” further the idea that the she thinks she is all-knowing and can excel at the highest level at everything in life, and the inclusion of “and” several times seems to make this list even longer. The author uses this syntax to dismiss the view that Daisy has of herself as completely incorrect, and to assert that she really is a shallow person who is only concerned with what happens in her life and therefore, she cannot and truly does not want to know everything.

• ·      Zeugma: “ At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others…young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life” (57).

Nick is beginning to feel overwhelmed and depressed by the city life because the city is so big and stimulating. By utilizing a zeugma, the author stresses that Nick feels that some young women may be losing too much of their lives by emphasizing the words “night” and “life” due to the structure of the sentence. Such a comparison – wasting one short night to wasting one’s entire life – seems almost irrational and Fitzgerald means it to be drastic because he wants the readers to realize that he is being ironic. He really is emphasizing that people who preoccupy themselves with excessive parties and empty social talk are the ones who are truly wasting their lives, rather than people who may miss out on social events occasionally because they are working. Fitzgerald yearns for his readers to consider that one’s existence may not always be simple and filled with fun, and that everyone must work diligently at times if they wish to improve their lives – not to say that a person cannot enjoy themselves.