How Does Fitzgerald Structure The Great Gatsby?

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How does Fitzgerald structure The Great Gatsby? Fitzgerald structures the events of The Great Gatsby in a very specific way in order to enhance the plot. The story’s events have apparently been scrambled, but it is in fact the sign of artistic order. Besides we get to know Gatsby much in the same way as in real life we become acquainted with a friend, namely progressively by fitting together fragments that are picked up as we read the novel. First Gatsby appears to Nick as a silhouette, an ambiguous figure that is almost unreal in the night: "fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor’s mansion…regarding the silver pepper of the stars". Then through Nick’s narrative we move forward and backward over Gatsby’s past. The opening and the closing pages of the novel frame Gatsby’s story: in the first chapter from the beginning down to ‘glittered along the water’ and in chapter IX from ‘One of my most vivid memories.’ down to the end. From the beginning it is Nick’s conflicting attitude that is foregrounded in the narrative; he was told by his father not to pass judgment upon others: ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ and he is rather prude in his comments. Towards the end of the novel however, it is clear that Nick has in the course of the novel learnt from experience. He no longer refrains from criticizing those who have disappointed him: ‘They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money…’ By contrast, Nick cannot bring himself to outwardly hate Gatsby: ‘Only Gatsby…was exempt from my reaction…Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.’ The story is symmetrical in nature. In the first part of the novel the characters are introduced aswell as their environment. Fitzgerald deliberately
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