True Love Never Ends English Literature Essay

As stated by Max Muller,” A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love”. The Great Gatsby is about a man and woman who fell madly in love but were separated by war. Fate brought them together again and it’s Jay Gatsby’s job to rekindle the flame of romance that had been put out so many years ago. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses numerous rhetorical devices to exemplify Gatsby’s unconditional love for Daisy. These rhetorical devices include symbolism, imagery, and diction.

Daisy and Gatsby’s love can be described as a ladder built of stone. The stone is symbolized as years they have gone through together or apart. This is one of the various ways symbolism is used throughout the book. Gatsby and Daisy started out as many couples do high school sweet hearts. Dreaming of being together forever, this would be where the foundation of the ladder was built.

The next steps were built from being apart. Gatsby served in the war as Daisy went on to marry Tom. Gatsby could not face the thought of not being with his one true love. He never married or even thought of seeing other women. The ladder ends with the tragic killing of Gatsby.

Gatsby was known for his grand parties, which he threw quite often and invited large amounts of people. These parties symbolize the emptiness Gatsby felt without Daisy. Gatsby threw these parties in hope of Daisy attending one. I feel another reason Gatsby threw these parties was to fill the desolation of his house. Gatsby was devastated when he heard of Daisy marring Tom and he knew she never truly loved him and that although be wed she still had feelings for him.

“At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.” With the quote Fitzgerald is symbolizing the rebirth of love. The two long lost lovers were reunited once again and with the first kiss Daisy’s beauty intensified. The emptiness in Gatsby’s heart was once again filled with sweet and unconditional love.

Fitzgerald also uses imagery to express the love Daisy and Gatsby shared. “He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favors and crushed flowers”. One can just imagine the path surrounded by dead and crushed flowers. Another example Fitzgerald uses to illustrate imagery is when he is talking about how Gatsby’s past was lurking in the shadows of his house, just out of reach of his hand. The reader can sense the eerie feeling while reading this passage and envision Gatsby’s memories lurking in the dark shadows. Fitzgerald also uses imagery when he describes Daisy’s pale white face. He explains her face as an incomparable milk of wonder. The reader can picture the white milky skin of Daisy’s face as she looks up to kiss Gatsby on his lips.

Words are important; they give the reader indications on how the story should be read and what emotional state the characters are displaying. Fitzgerald ensures this using diction, such as when the term unutterable depression was used. Unutterable depression was indicated to reflect the mood of Gatsby when he sensed that the love he shared with Daisy would never be what it once was. Gatsby was obsessed with Daisy and the thought of not being able to be with her was unbearable.

Determinedly is another sample of diction that Fitzgerald uses to express the way Gatsby clarified that he desired to redevelop him and Daisy’s love to how it previously was before she married Tom. An example of diction can also be found when Nick was explaining the tone in which Gatsby confronted Daisy when they shared their kiss. Nick describes the tone as appalling sentimentality, which means that Gatsby was very sentimental and sweet when confronting Daisy. Gatsby’s intention was if he was sweet and sentimental to make her realize what a great guy she was missing out on.

Love can be expressed in many ways, a kiss or a hug but also in writing by the author using rhetorical devices. Fitzgerald finds various methods of using this to describe the love between his two main characters Daisy and Gatsby. Throughout his book their love faced many trials but in the end true love conquers it all. Gatsby always knew that it was he who Daisy belonged with. With the kiss the romance between the two of them rekindled, and although the book ended with the tragic unexpected death of Gatsby, he died knowing that the love him and Daisy shared was true.

Bibliographies:

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.

Bloom, Harold. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Infobase, 2006. Google EBook.