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Narration Structure and Stlye

 

            
             Told in retrospect, the novel is a first person narrative in chronological order of the events of the summer of 1922 with Gatsby's personal history revealed through various flashbacks spaced intermittently throughout the plot. However, before delving into the past, Fitzgerald starts his novel in the present where he evaluates the four main characters in the novel. If this evaluation was placed at the end of the novel, responders may have developed their own personal opinions on the value of these characters contrasting to the portrait which Fitzgerald was trying paint of them. Subsequently, the composer managed this problem by influencing the composer's judgements from the very beginning of the plot using the convention of structure. Responders sympathise with Gatsby because they have been told he "turns out to be alright in the end", feel contempt for the Buchanans (even before it is made clear exactly what they have done) because they are described as "foul dust" and respect and trust Nick as storyteller as he is self described as honest and non-judgemental. .
             By conveying all impressions and ideas from one perspective, that is of narrator Nick Carraway's, Fitzgerald unifies his composition. All values and judgements are those of Nick's which helps to maintain simplicity and give the novel its cohesiveness. Fitzgerald continues to keep his novel simple by being highly selective in the material which he chooses to include into the plot. He creates a series of scenes, most of them parties and any gaps in the plot are effectively filled with brief passages of analysis and overview. Dialogue is sparse but when used, is very effective in in shedding light on the disintegrating values of the society. An example of this is at the party of Tom and Myrtle, wealthy Mrs. McKee says "i almost made a mistake.almost married a little tyke.I knew he was below me". The snatches of dialogue that Nick selects are extremely effective in displaying how America's upper class determined a person's value by their social status.


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