Blog Topic #3: Syntax

·       “I spent my Saturday nights in New York, because those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant, from his garden, and the cars going up and down his drive”(179).

·       “And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy” (49).

F. Scott Fitzgerald has a very unique syntax of writing throughout the novel as it changes very often. In some cases Fitzgerald writes with a loose, run-on syntax, using multiple commas and drawing out each one of his points. Many descriptive details are used in the loose sentence above as Nick discusses the New York scene around him on his Saturday nights. In these run-on sentences, Fitzgerald’s ideas are described much more thoroughly with excess detail in order to force a visual into the reader’s mind. By using long sentences and drawing out his ideas, Fitzgerald creates a reality-based tone and makes the reader feel as if they were there. This tone is conveyed sporadically throughout the novel to keep the reader interested and make the story more relatable to the audience.  In other cases, Fitzgerald incorporates a choppy syntax with multiple short, terse sentences. As he conveys his ideas through several short sentences, Fitzgerald creates a chaotic tone and allows the reader to experience Nick’s frenzied train of thought. As Nick collects his thoughts in the sentence above, he laconically states his opinion about large parties and, despite the few words he actually uses, causes the reader to feel jumbled and confused as if they were inside of Nick’s mind. The diversity of sentence structures used by Fitzgerald throughout the novel significantly change the tone of the story and enable the audience to pick up on more than only one feeling.