Style and Shape of The Great Gatsby

Langman, F.H. "Style and Shape in The Great Gatsby." Critical Essays on Fitzgerald's The Great Gastby. (1984): 31-54. Print.

In The Great Gatsby, almost all the discussion of the novel has turned rapidly from a perfunctory to the “brilliance” of Fitzgerald’s style. There are bigger topics raised by the novel with its legendary quality. Langman commemorates the vision of the American dream, romantic hope, and romantic disillusion is noticed in the narrative. As we move through The Great Gatsby, we realize the narration continues with reinforcement and repetition but not growth. Langman helps us to see that the story delineates a character by a gesture and this is followed by paragraphs of analysis. Nick responds with sympathy and has a critical conscious towards what he is concluding in the story. The longer passages that Nick narrates lacks Romanticism and we, as readers, are more tempted to look into the detail of the readings to find the depth behind those passages. When Nick narrates, he can get deeply involved, but can keep from being drawn in to the emotion. At times he feels discontent and unfufilment. The narrative suggests at times a distinctive sensibility and clearly this is Nick’s own. There are moments that he can’t help but being drawn in to Gatsby by more than just detached sympathy. He can reveal himself as far more deeply like Gatsby than unlike. Nick’s role in The Great Gatsby is to experience what Gatsby experiences, although he can only feel these things, not translate them into action.

The article contains a lot of information that could help of infer how to determine the ethics of the narration. We notice that Nick changes from being very critical to being sympathetic and we ask what really the narrative style throughout the book is. We also see that the narrator switches in a way where Nick's thoughts are not always telling the content of the story. The dialogue consists of Nick trying to deeply get to know the characters in the story by trying to imagine what they would be thinking especially Gatsby. Then we see the thoughts of other characters. Nick also reveals himself in ways to get closer to Gatsby, but then other times won’t give a fact away about himself. He is constantly judging people from the outside but then in the article it states that “he can’t translate Gatsby’s experiences into actions. Why does he judge the characters in The Great Gatsby but cannot feel the actual things he says? He contradicts himself many times throughout the book but we tend to not notice because we concentrate on his judgmental ways. The way he chooses to change up his narrative is sometimes hard for me to follow and understand what Nick is actually talking about. Fitzgerald narration is confusing at times and we have to look deeper to understand the meaning behind this.