Fitzgerald called The Great Gatsby a "novel of selected incident", modelled after Flaubert's Madame Bovary. "What I cut out of it both physically and emotionally would make another novel," he said. Fitzgerald's stylistic method is to let a part stand for the whole. In Chapters I to III, for example, he lets three parties stand for the entire summer and for the contrasting values of three different worlds. He also lets small snatches of dialogue represent what is happening at each party. The technique is cinematic. The camera zooms in, gives us a snatch of conversation, and then cuts to another group of people. Nick Serves almost as a recording device, jotting down what he hears. Fitzgerald's ear for dialogue, especially for the colloquial phrases of the period is excellent.
Fitzgerald's style might also be called imagistic. His language is full of images, concrete verbal pictures appealing to the senses. There is water imagery in descriptions of the rain, Long Island sound, and the swimming pool. There is a religious imagery in the Godlike eyes of Dr. Eckelburg and in words such as incarnation and grail. There is color imagery: pink for Gatsby and yellow/white for Daisy.
Finally, we might call Fitzgerald's style reflective. There are several important passages at which Nick stops and reflects on the meaning of the action, almost interpreting the events. The style in such passages is dense, intellectual, almost difficult as Nick tries to wrestle with the meanings behind the events he has witnessed.
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