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Nick of great gatsby9/1/2023 McKee, however, is simply described as “shrill, languid, handsome, and horrible” (30). He had just shaved, for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone, and he was most respectful in his greeting to every one in the room” (30). McKee, saying he is “a pale, feminine man from the flat below. Nick’s differing attitudes toward men and women are also seen when he describes Mr. The diction used in Jordan’s description understates Jordan’s feminine qualities, and she seems pretty, but very boyish and athletic. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet” (11). When he describes Jordan Baker, the other women in the room, her description is equally bland. He still does not give a single clue as to her great physical beauty other than to say she has “bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth” (9). When Nick describes Daisy, supposedly a great beauty, he spends most of his time talking about her “voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion” (9). you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat” (7). Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body. Nick describes Tom as “a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. His description of Tom Buchanan, another man, is very erotic. Fitzgerald uses Nick’s descriptions of the main characters in the novel to arouse suspicion, and then he uses the scene in the elevator that precedes the ellipses to set the stage for Nick’s very real act of homosexuality that takes place at the end of chapter two.įrom the very beginning of the novel, Nick’s sexuality is in question. Fitzgerald uses this scene to finalize what the reader should have already begun to suspect about Nick’s sexuality: Nick is a closeted homosexual. There is no reason to include this scene if not to show that Nick has had some sort of sexual experience with Mr. The story then jumps to Nick “lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station” (38). Nick tells us in the scene that closes chapter two that he “was standing beside bed and was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands” (38). What takes places in the narrative gaps is a sexual encounter between Nick and Mr. The scene is very fragmented, and, as a strange break in an otherwise thoughtful and clear narration, Nick’s vague and broken recollection stands out and indicates that there is something that Nick does not want the reader to know. There is only one time that Fitzgerald (or Nick, as the narrator) uses ellipses in The Great Gatsby, and it is when Nick leaves the party with Mr.
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