Ways In Which Fitzgerald Tells The Story In Ch7 Essay

Write about the ways in which Fitzgerald tells the story in chapter 7 of the novel.
Chapter 7 is quite the iconic chapter in Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’. Right from the start of the chapter, we as the reader see a colossal change in the protagonist that is Jay Gatsby.   His reasons being the fact that Daisy – his old, reconciled love – has started to visit his house more often. Gatsby’s lifestyle that consisted of lavish parties and amount of unnecessary servants are no more, as his attention is now focussed on Daisy Buchanan. In the first few pages of the chapter, Fitzgerald uses the semantic fields of heat references to show the tension amongst the characters. Nick claims ‘the next day to b broiling’ as he says ‘it was the warmest of summers’.
Another technique that Fitzgerald plays with is the use of the superlatives ‘perspired’ and ‘simmered’ which also stands for the tension brewing in each character, subsequently adding to the detrimental effects of Gatsby’s tragedy. With the use of Nick’s commentary on various snippets of speech telling how the butler ‘roared’ this also makes it clear to the reader the significance of the tragic events which will be the downfall of Gatsby’s character. The current events shaping Gatsby’s future are seemed to be ever so significant due to the choice of Fitzgerald not to include any of Gatsby’s history in to this chapter.
A clever technique used by Fitzgerald is the voice of Michaelis who describes Myrtle’s death bluntly, yet lacking the emotion.   Nick claims ‘so we drove on towards death’ which coherently shows that the immediate events following this chapter will lead to death, but also releasing all tensions built up between the characters at the beginning of the narrative. In my opinion, this particular chapter lacks chronology to add to the disjointed nature of Myrtle’s death. Fitzgerald uses the yellow car that killed Myrtle as a way to shine light on Gatsby’s consequences, in which he realises his folly and...