Authorial Choices and Textual Features (DP IB English A: Language and Literature: HL): Revision Note

The Great Gatsby: authorial choices and textual features

Across assessments in English A Language and Literature, you need to show the ability to analyse and evaluate how a writer achieves a purpose, conveys a message and/or explores a theme. Therefore, knowing the names of authorial choices and textual features and pairing them with specific references and impacts is key to your success in assessments.

Literary methods

There are a number of literary methods used in The Great Gatsby:

• Structural techniques 

• Setting and narrative perspective

• Language

• Characterisation 

• Symbolism and motifs

Structural techniques

Chronological structure

Fitzgerald’s structure of The Great Gatsby is largely chronological as it follows the narrator Nick Carraway through his experiences.

• The novel’s nine chapters chronologically follow the seasons: starting in springtime, heightening tension in the summer, and ending in autumn to represent ending

• The exposition (opens in a new tab) introduces Nick the narrator, and the rising action (opens in a new tab) describes the setting and introduces the mysterious Gatsby

• The fifth chapter acts as a pivot: Gatsby’s reunion with Daisy ends his long journey towards her and begins unfolding the consequences of their romance

• Chapter 7 may be considered the climax (opens in a new tab); in the Plaza Hotel, Gatsby’s past is revealed and his previously mysterious and controlled characterisation falls apart

• Events that follow can be considered the falling action (opens in a new tab)of the tragedy

• However, Fitzgerald deviates from a strictly chronological structure in the following ways:

  • Events are told retrospectively through Nick Carraway’s memories

  • Flashbacks (opens in a new tab) allow Fitzgerald to slowly reveal Gatsby’s past, building suspense and creating a mystery

Foreshadowing

Fitzgerald foreshadows (opens in a new tab) Gatsby’s tragic ending to build suspense and raise key themes about the American Dream and the idea of fate. 

• The novel begins as the narrator, Nick, warns readers of Gatsby’s doomed fate:

  • He foreshadows Gatsby’s failure with a metaphor (opens in a new tab): “it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams”

• From the first chapter, Fitzgerald hints at the significance of the “green light” in shaping Gatsby’s future: 

  • Nick narrates how Gatsby “stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way” with "trembling" hands

  • The description of a “single green light, minute and far away” foreshadows ideas about Gatsby’s failure to achieve his dreams

• Fitzgerald foreshadows the disastrous consequences of Gatsby’s indulgent and reckless lifestyle:

  • In Chapter 3, Nick witnesses the “bizarre and tumultuous scene” of a car, which Gatsby had driven “not two minutes before”, in a “ditch”

  • This foreshadows the accident in which Daisy hits and kills Myrtle with Gatsby's car

Setting and narrative perspective

Setting 

Fitzgerald raises themes of class and cultural identity by setting the main action of his novel in towns that symbolise (opens in a new tab) wealth and status.

• Typical for a realist novel, Fitzgerald uses a setting that exists in the real world, namely in Long Island, New York

• Although both East Egg and West Egg are wealthy residential areas, Fitzgerald uses these settings to highlight the snobbery of old money towards the nouveau riche:

  • West Egg, where Gatsby’s ostentatious mansion lies, is less fashionable than East Egg, where Daisy and Tom live

  • This represents Gatsby’s failed attempt at social mobility, wherein his money does not afford him status and class

  • Tom mocks Gatsby’s lack of heritage, calling him "Mr Nobody from Nowhere"

  • The Buchanan’s house is a “Georgian Colonial mansion”, whereas Gatsby’s house is described as “a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy”

• Fitzgerald highlights the wealth disparity in 1920s America by including a bleak, industrial location called “valley of ashes”, located between the Eggs and New York:

  • He describes it as a place “where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke”

• The story takes place in 1922, a decadent time known as the Roaring Twenties:

  • The lives of the characters reflect the economic prosperity and rampant consumerism of a post-war boom

Narrative perspective 

Fitzgerald employs an unreliable narrator who offers a peripheral account of Jay Gatsby, heightening the mystery surrounding him and contributing to the description of him as “Great”.

• Fitzgerald’s first-person (opens in a new tab) perspective is in the form of narrator Nick Carraway, as a witness and participant:

  • Nick’s understanding of Gatsby is gradually revealed as the novel progresses

• The story is told retrospectively: Nick is telling the story from a point in the future:

  • Chapter 1 begins with Nick’s reflection: “When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever”

• This subjective perspective shows characters’ weaknesses, not least Nick’s own frailties:

  • In addition, it heightens suspense as the mystery about Gatsby is slowly and dubiously revealed through a past-tense account and rumours

• Throughout the novel, readers gain a sense of Gatsby’s character through gossip and Nick’s encounters:

  • Gatsby’s party guests and friends provide information about his past

  • Guests muse about his wealth, raising ideas about the social and moral decay of the time

  • Gatsby is rumoured to be a “bootlegger”, a spy, a corrupt businessman, a relative of “Kaiser Wilhelm” and “Von Hindenburg”, and an Oxford graduate

  • His extravagant lifestyle raises suspicion; “young ladies” describe him as a “second cousin to the devil”

Language

Imagery 

Fitzgerald’s use of imagery (opens in a new tab) contributes to themes that examine the American Dream and the superficial materialism of the elite in 1920s New York.

• Fitzgerald is famous for his rich sensory imagery that describes Gatsby’s luxurious parties on “summer nights” near the “hot sand” of his beach:

  • Sound and light imagery describe the parties as romantic and decadent: “voices and color” change under “the constantly changing light”

  • Guests are “like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars”, raising ideas about the temptation of wealth

• Dark and light imagery reflects themes of fate, particularly Gatsby’s dreams about being with Daisy:

  • Nick sees Gatsby looking at the “silver pepper of the stars” to which he aspires

  • In Chapter 6, when he kisses Daisy and becomes “forever wed” to her, there was a “stir and bustle among the stars”

  • The complex nature of Gatsby’s love for Daisy is highlighted by contrasts between the “moonlight” and “shadows”

• Pathetic fallacy (opens in a new tab) contributes to the melancholic romanticism of scenes:

  • When Gatsby and Daisy meet, the rain is “a damp mist, through which occasional thin drops swam like dew”

  • Daisy’s voice is a “a wild tonic in the rain”

• Imagery juxtaposes (opens in a new tab) the wealth and luxury of Long Island against the industrialisation of Queens, New York:

  • In the “valley of ashes” Fitzgerald describes “Ash-gray men” who “move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air”

Characterisation

Fitzgerald uses characterisation typical of a tragedy to deliver messages about wealth, status, and thwarted romantic relationships.  

Nick Carraway

• As the observant and sentimental narrator of the story, Nick Carraway details the virtues and frailties of Jay Gatsby

• As an intradiegetic narrator, he is drawn into the dark world in which he finds himself, while remaining an outsider:

  • Fitzgerald tells readers that Nick is inclined to “reserve all judgments”

  • This allows him to objectively offer insights that raise themes of moral decay 

• His power lies in his passivity within the story, acting as a witness to events:

  • Gatsby confides in him, which allows readers to understand and sympathise with the mysterious and misguided character at the heart of the story

  • He begins the novel telling readers he was “privy to the secret griefs of wild and unknown men”

• Fitzgerald makes Nick confidante to Daisy as well; through their conversations readers are alerted to the doomed romance, heightening tension and creating pathos (opens in a new tab)

Jay Gatsby

• Jay Gatsby can be understood as a tragic hero:

  • He is introduced as a man of high wealth

  • His fatal flaw, or hamartia (opens in a new tab), is his ill-advised and dubious pursuit of wealth

  • His identity is an illusion and his extravagant life-style is a facade

  • Typical of a tragic hero, Gatsby’s fate is inevitable; his death is a result of his obsessive and illusory love for Daisy

• His drive to achieve a level of prosperity great enough to win over Daisy illustrates social norms regarding upper-class marriage, heritage, and social status: 

  • Gatsby goes to great lengths to mask his past and the fact that he is an outsider, which gives way to rumours that surround him in mystery

• Gatsby embodies the ideals of the American Dream via his status gained as a self-made man:

  • He seeks to distance himself from his origins (rural, agricultural America), denying his heritage by changing his name and inventing a fictional past

  • However, his "extraordinary gift for hope" and "romantic readiness" sets him apart from the bored and cynical elite and evokes sympathy from the reader

Daisy Buchanan

• Daisy’s significance in the novel is in her role as Gatsby’s love, the “green light” for which he desperately strives

• She is portrayed as hedonistic, frivolous, and often superficial, which alerts readers to Gatsby’s doomed dreams; this makes her one of the novel’s antagonists (opens in a new tab) 

• However, she also represents the social context of 1920s upper-class America:

  • She exemplifies the idea of elite heritage and social class (old money): Gatsby describes her voice as “full of money”

  • Her heritage and upbringing shapes her identity, which illustrates her complicated relationship with both Tom Buchanan and Gatsby

• Fitzgerald divulges her motivations, vulnerabilities, and dilemmas through her relationship with her cousin Nick: 

  • She is cynically aware of her place in society, suggesting that being a “beautiful little fool” is “the best thing a girl can be in this world”

Tom Buchanan

• Tom Buchanan is the novel’s main antagonist; as Daisy’s husband, he is a barrier to the romance between Gatsby and Daisy

• He represents the theme of elitism and old money: 

  • His dismissive attitude towards Gatsby portrays his snobbery

• He is portrayed as xenophobic; he suggests that the “white race” may become “submerged” as a result of immigration:

  • Fitzgerald mocks Tom’s faux intelligence when he suggests that his concern about immigration is “scientific stuff”

  • This contributes to his characterisation as the archetype (opens in a new tab) of a college athlete

• Tom’s lustful affair with Myrtle presents his hypocritical and patriarchal attitudes: he is at once protective over Daisy and reckless with his marriage:

  • His physical and emotional abuse of the working-class Myrtle illustrates how he uses his power and privilege to exploit others for his own folly 

• Fitzgerald uses the affair to drive the plot towards its tragic climax: when Myrtle is killed, Tom wrongly directs her husband George Wilson toward Gatsby

Symbolism and motifs

Symbolism 

F. Scott Fitzgerald uses symbolic representations to raise themes about obsessive love, extravagance, and illusion. 

• The “green light” is symbolic of the distance between Gatsby and Daisy:

  • Gatsby reaches for the “green light” that is “minute and far away”

  • The light symbolises Gatsby’s enduring love for Daisy: he tells her “‘You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock”

  • At the end of the novel, the narrator Nick poignantly concludes that the “dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it”

• References to eyes and blindness represent the illusory world of East and West Egg:

  • Tom’s eyes are “arrogant” and restless, while Daisy’s eyes are simultaneously “bright things” and “impersonal”

  • The eyes of “Doctor T. J. Eckleburg” symbolise the idea of a watchful eye turning away from the darkness of society

  • The eyes appear in “no face” though they are “gigantic”, representing, perhaps, a silent majority 

  • The eyes look away into “eternal blindness” and move away from the “solemn dumping ground” of Queens

• Gatsby’s mansion and parties are symbolic of Fitzgerald’s representations of the wasteful and hedonistic attitudes of the ultra-wealthy: 

  • The “five crates of oranges and lemons” ordered for the parties become a “pyramid of pulpless halves” by the end of the weekend

  • Guests are compared to “moths”, symbolising the idea of characters seeking light in the darkness

  • Constant references to drinking alcohol represent the decadent lifestyle 

Motifs

In The Great Gatsby, motifs (opens in a new tab) emphasise characterisations and contribute to mood, providing contrasts between wealth and poverty, as well as highlighting romantic elements in the novel. 

• Colour is used throughout the novel to show the vibrant life-style of the upper-class in contrast to those living outside of it in the industrial “valley of ashes”

• The idea of perfection and elitism is raised by the description of Daisy and Jordan wearing “white dresses” looking like “silver idols”:

  • Daisy refers to her “white girlhood” and Jordan Baker describes Daisy as “dressed in white” in a “little white roadster”

• Yellow and blue symbolise fantasy and wealth: “yellow cocktail music” plays at Gastby’s parties as “girls in yellow” dance and gossip:

  • Gatsby’s gardens are “blue” and Daisy has a strand of wet hair on her cheek “like a dash of blue paint”

• Notably, cars are used as motifs that heighten tension and contribute to the tragedy:

  • Gatsby’s station wagon is a “brisk yellow bug” and Tom’s “coupe” is blue

  • Expensive, colourful cars are driven carelessly, recklessly killing outsiders

  • Daisy drives the “big yellow” car which runs down working-class Myrtle and, ultimately, leads to Gatsby’s death and George Wilson’s suicide

  • In contrast, cars in Chicago are described as having wheels “painted black as a mourning wreath”

  • In the “valley of ashes” cars are grey like the “grey land and the spasms of bleak dust”

• Even “Doctor T. J. Eckleburg” has blue eyes and a pair of “enormous yellow spectacles”

Sources:

Fitzgerald, Francis Scott. The Great Gatsby. Penguin, 2008. Accessed 16 April 2026