Topic #1: Rhetorical Strategies

• Litotes–“In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.” (1)
• Alliteration–“I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Mæcenas knew.” (4).
• Simile–“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” (39).
• Polysyndeton–“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” (39)

          In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, the various uses of rhetorical strategies allow Fitzgerald to tell the story of Gatsby in a unique and sophisticated style. Told from the perspective of Nick Carraway, the scene before and during one of Gatsby's lavishly thrown parties, Fitzgerald states “At least once a fortnight a crops of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden” (40). With this statement, the author shows exemplary control of his writing  by including multiple strategies into one sentence. He starts with a hyperbole of strange proportions "a crops of caterers came down", and by alliterating the statement, he further emphasizes the amount of caterers that had arrived. Furthermore, the second hyperbole characterizes Gatsby as an extravagant man, while showing Fitzgerald's ease in setting the scene for the novel. The early novel is characterized primarily by the use of excess rhetorical strategies within one sentence. Near the beginning of Chapter 3, the setting is expertly described when Nick narrates "at high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot of his beach while his two-motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam" (39). The stage is magnificently set when one can imagine the excitement and mess of people congregated at the Gatsby Estate. The amazing stage-setting writing and explicit descriptions is only the tip of the iceberg when analyzing the style in which Fitzgerald writes.