The great Gatsby analysis: language features

“1This is a valley of ashes a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; 2 where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, 3 finally, a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air”

1: “This is the valley of ashes a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens” is described as a place of despair and dirtiness. “Fantastic farm,” points towards the valley of ashes being a place where despair and loss is abundant. “Ridges and hills”, describes the scenery. It’s as if the valley could of been something of beauty but it had crashed and burned somewhere in the past or overlooked and taken for granted.

2: “where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke” This means that the loss and despair is displayed as the people who live in the valley of ashes. The soke and the chimneys display the work that people who live in the valley put. The work they put in does not help or become something that will help them escape the valley. Their houses are described as made of ashes. This may represent that the houses they live in or the lives they have made were made from mostly nothing. They started with nothing and they finish with nothing. This points to the social classes that are portrayed with in the story. They are poor and their ancestors were poor and the future generations will continue to be poor as long as they break away from the valley.

3: “finally, a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men” this portrays the men who inhabit the valley to be worn down by the lives they live out in the valley. They have been physically affected by the nature of the the valley. They have been described as ash-grey, meaning that they themselves had made their lives the way they needed too. They worked to make them who they are but can not do any better in the social classing system. “who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air” This means that the social classes break them mentally and physically down back into the powdery ash they started as. All they have become an done for themselves had been for nothing. This describes the how the social class keeps lower class men under control by giving them nothing they won’t have enough resources to escape the reality they have been given.

“1 I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West — 2 all dead now I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition.”

1: “I am the son of some wealthy people in the Middle West” Gatsby tells a partial lie. He did have a family in the middle west, but they were poor and he wished for a better life so he left and came across a man that raised him as his own. Gatsby was wishing to inherit this man’s large sum of money, but it was given to someone else. Gatsby then left and made a life for himself in New York.

2: “ all dead now I was brought up in America but educated at Oxford, because all my ancestors have been educated there for many years. It is a family tradition.” Gatsby did not believe that his parents were suit to be his own. He considered them dead as he took on his new persona and did not regret making a life for himself else where. He did go to oxford, but only for six months or so due to his new found dad. He does not completely lie, but he bends the truth to his advantage.

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