Blog topic #1 Rhetorical strategies

• .     “With fenders spread like wings we scattered light through half Astoria” (68).

      The comparison between the fenders and wings can conclude that Gatsby’s car is a symbol for new money and the rejection of the old in the city of ashes. It also can be compared to immigration as a new sign of improving since Gatsby seems to attract happiness at his party. This image of scattering light can be like the addition of new money into society and how someone like Gatsby is able to be successful with little traditional beliefs.

•           “driven by a white chauffer, in which sat three modish negroes” (69).

Fitzgerald’s use of irony in the phrase, draws emphasis to the success people are accomplishing and how unreal it really is. The addition of this phrase attempts to make Gatsby’s life a bit more credible than he sounds. The antithesis between “white” “negroes” suggests that this time period had things turned upside down like the corruption of the policy when Gatsby takes out a white card and how everything is so materialistic. 

•           “’ Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge…anything at all’” (69).

What is omitted by Fitzgerald is the comparison between the “[passing] over this bridge” and the passing into the country. After all the American dream can only happen if you are in America and is supposed to be the self –improvement of an individual that has great success later in life. Gatsby’s American Dream is the same except he also wants Daisy to be part of his life. The detailed life that Gatsby has been mentioning becomes credible with this phrase because of the three black people were able to have success in the 1920’s why couldn’t someone like Gatsby be successful.