Dialogue and Narration Connect

Bloom, Harold. "The Structure of The Great Gatsby." Modern Critical Interpretations: The Great Gatsby. (1986): 5-11. Print.

"The Structure of the Great Gatsby" is a well thought out article and helps us to understand Gatsby and Fitzgerald's dialogue. Harold Bloom states the narrative is sustained for the beginning of the story. The dialogue that is being told is not to reveal details and emotions in the story yet, but to give us a sense of what The Great Gatsby is going to be about and what character the narration is focusing on. Bloom states in his article that Gatsby was "standing there in the moonlight- watching over nothing." This quote is only stated to help us understand the character of Gatsby and of his passion as a person. The understanding of this passion is reserved for when the characters reveal themselves. There is no apparent narrator at this point and we thought that the narration was first person by Nick throughout the story as a whole. The narration from this is difficult to interpret because it all about Gatsby and Nick is not stated once. Fitzgerald also cuts out passages to for hightened dialogue and reduces explicit statements in order to highten the advocate of his prose. Nick, the narrator, never explains any of this, which is why we may think Fitzgerald wanted to explain this on his own and recreate a third person narrative. Also, Bloom confers he quickens the dialogue through which the novel often makes its vital diclosures and confrontations. All this dialogue and the ways it is explained in the story is difficult to understand in first person.

By reading this article, Blooms helps us to get a good understand of the style of the dialogue and why it is used throughout the story. What is hard to interpret is what narrative style is used when using this dialogue and why the narration switches from first to third person narrative. What we have seen in the story of The Great Gatsby, is the use of different narratives for different views on the story. When explaining the dialogue and hightening the prose, we can infer that third person is a better way to confront the problems but if this is the case, then why didn't Fitzgerald use third person throughout the whole book instead of switching the narrative up on us? This is the most confusing question that we pose on the story of The Great Gatsby. When Nick narrates, we can only infer so much. We can only see his opinion on the situations and it is hard for us as readers to really know the truth of the story especially the dialogue Fitzgerald uses. The dialogue is one of the most subjective parts of the story and it needs to be written in the best way possible. We understand why the dialogue is written and understand what is written but what we question is why it is written in one narration and then changed to another. Why Nick tells the story and the Fitzgerald tells the story in theird person is the real question we pose.