The Great Gatsby (Chapter 8)

Ashlynn McNamara

Authors Style

Fitzgerald writes in a way that makes you want to read more or even have to reread paragraphs from before because he does not fully state what is going on. As for example, on page 161 he states; "I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn't believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about... like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees" (Fitzgerald). In this paragraph, Fitzgerald foreshadows the killing of Gatsby by describing the feeling of Gatsby when he is shot, slowly dieing. But Fitzgerald does not fully give details on what is happening, this makes you intrigued and want to read more, but it also makes you think and have to go back and read to fully understand what is going on.