that there were

enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold.

The imagery here paints a picture of just how lavish and ostentatious these parties are.

While at one of the parties, Nick and Jordan find their way to Gatsby's library. While there, they meet a guest, Owl Eyes, who is enthralled by the apparent authenticity of the room and the collection. However, it should be noted that it does not seem that Gatsby actually uses his library, since he "didn't cut the pages." These certainly are not books that people read for pleasure either. Rather they are the types of books that someone might put on display in order to impress others. Certainly Owl Eyes is impressed. This image of a library that is more for show than for use indicates to the reader that, like almost everything else in the mansion, it is there to showcase wealth and to influence others' opinions of Gatsby.

Most of Chapter Three is devoted to a description of the party where Nick first meets Gatsby. The dominant impression of the chapter is that, while the parties are full of activity and fun, they are also a bit empty; this impression extends to Gatsby himself, who we meet in the chapter, and who may be physically at the party, but emtionally is absent or aloof.

There are plenty of details in the chapter to reinforce this. One thinks of Nick's stumbling on the owl-eyed man in the library, who is amazed at the lengths to which Gatsby had gone to create the illusion of an intellectual life (he is incredulous that the books are "real"). Or the passage in which some of Gatsby's guests speculate on his past (he either "killed a man" or was a spy). Or there is the wonderful description of Gatsby's smile: "It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."

Fitzgerald is able to establish this dominant impression right from the beginning of the chapter. Here is the first paragraph in its entirety:

There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.”

Imagery: The passage is rich with sensory detail. We are drawn into the passage immediately by the faint sound of music; we can see the "men and girls" flitting at a distance in Gatsby's gardens at night; we watch the men diving, hear the motorboats on the water, or the comings and goings of his cars. The impression is, above all, one of great wealth, of course, but also of tremendous activity. Gatsby's house seems less a residence than a resort.

Figurative language: Fitzgerald uses similes in the passage to help reinforce his dominant impression of the party. For example, he describes the "men and girls" as "like moths" flitting between the "whisperings, champagne and the stars." The people are ephemeral, coming and going without purpose, attracted to metaphorical "light" of champagne and the stars. The mood is at once mysterious and tantalizing. The word "moth" suggests the warm summer nights of Gatsby's parties; his gardens are "blue," lit subtly and seen from a distance. It is like we are seeing a dream.

Diction: Considering Fitzgerald's word choice reveals a kind of poetic compactness to his prose. There is a musicality to his diction that reinforces the sensory details he describes. For example, when he talks about how Gatsby's motorboats draw aquaplanes "over cataracts of foam," the word "cataracts" both suggests the visual image of rushing water and the roar of a large waterfall; the staccato nature of the word's pronunciation is congruent to the sound of the boats going by. It is a noisy word used to describe a noisy scene. A similar point can be made about his use of the verb "scamper" to describe the travels of his station wagon to and from the train station: "scampering" is a kind of playful running about, which reinforces the impression of vacant activity Fitzgerald is trying convey in the paragraph.

Like Gatsby himself, or his love for Daisy, the party is a kind of hollow exercise; it is like a desire that seems always just out of reach, and even if it could be had, would prove unsatisfying.

Gatsby is almost obsessed with time when he arrives at Nick's; even before Daisy's scheduled arrival time, he declares that she isn't coming. Then, when Gatsby and Daisy first see each other, in Nick's parlor, Gatsby pretends to be completely at ease, though it is obvious that he is not: "His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock." The fact that the clock is "defunct," which I take to mean that it no longer tells time, seems to me to symbolize Gatsby's belief that it is possible to relive the past—to stop time, so to speak.

Then, Gatsby almost breaks the clock when he moves his head. Nick says, "the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers and set it back in place." This seems to confirm the aforementioned symbolism. Gatsby is so obsessed with stopping time that he almost inadvertently smashes a clock (which would literally stop time—at least, it would stop a clock from keeping time). This obsession with time is mirrored by his very precise knowledge of when he last saw Daisy. To her, it was "'many years'" ago; to him, it was "'Five years next November.'"

When Gatsby apologizes for dropping the clock, Nick awkwardly mentions that it's old. "I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor." It is interesting that Nick uses an expression of time to pardon Gatsby's carelessness: it's as though the clock isn't worth much because it is "old." But so is the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy. Perhaps this episode foreshadows the eventual demise of their relationship.

Chapter 5 is the middle chapter, the turning point, of the 9 chapter novel. In it, Gatsby has finally reunited with Daisy after five long years of preparation.

The dominant imagery in the chapter deals with time.  Gatsby stands near the clock on Nick's mantle as he speaks to Daisy. At one point, the clock tumbles to the floor, but Gatsby rescues it. The clock is a symbol of Gatsby's attempt to stop time and return to he and Daisy's original courtship.

Clothing imagery also abounds. Gatsby wears white, as if a bride at a wedding, with a gold and silver tie, symbolizing wealth. When Daisy sees all of Gatsby's shirts in his closet she begins to weep. Gatsby mistakes her tears for joy, but Daisy knows she cannot relive the past. She knows that she cannot have love and wealth (with Gatsby), only wealth (with Tom). Gatsby's idealism regarding time stands in contrast to Daisy's and Nick's realism.

Fitzgerald uses figurative language like personification to help readers visualize descriptions and actions.  Fitzgerald's style is to use long, rhythmic descriptions.  For example, in the first chapter when Nick describes his approach to the Buchanan house, his narration uses the words "ran", "jumping", and "drifting" to give the description vision and vibrancy.  By personifiying the lawn, the reader feels as though it is almost a living entity.  Later, in the same chapter, Nick describes Daisy by saying "...the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face....-then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk."  The personification and then the simile both help the reader more clearly envision how Nick sees Daisy.  Then, later, in chapter 3, Nick describes the first time he meets Jay Gatsby.  Nick describes one of Jay Gatsby's greatest gifts - his smile and charm.  In this description, by using detail and, again, personification, Fitzgerald lets the reader see just how Gatsby's smile could be used to open doors for him.  This helps the reader better understand this character.

In his artistic narrative, Fitzgerald employs figurative language to create metaphoric representations of his motifs and to enhance and develop his themes. Beginning with an almost magical Gatsby--the "great" Gatsby--who can recreate the past much like a magician, Fitzgerald introduces his character mysteriously one evening, stationed on the green lawn gazing at the single green light on the end of Daisy's pier. Poetically, Nick notes,

When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

And, with his magical power of dreaming, expressed in such figurative language as this example,

a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing,

Gatsby transforms himself into a platonic conception of himself--"a son of God"--but using illegal and corrupt means to do so. Thus, the romance is contaminated in the novel, and Daisy, whose voice possesses

an inexhaustible charm...the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it.... the golden girl...

loses her appeal after she reveals her true materialistic nature as foreshadowed by her acceptance of Tom Buchanan's proposal and the spectacularly costly $350,000 string of pearls; Gatsby, then, understands "what a grotesque thing a rose is" and "the colossal vitality" of his illusion.  Like his automobile that once seems "to mirror a thousand suns" and have fenders "like wings," his dream of love is dead just as the car becomes the "yellow death car."

With the allusion of songs from the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald evokes the tenor of the time of his narrative, one that also acts as a metaphor for the disillusion of Jay Gatsby's personal and idealized American Dream; for his case is merely "the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty."

Symbols also support motifs and themes. The eyes of Dr. T. J. Ecklebury "brood on over the solemn dumping ground" of the Valley of Ashes, which represent the waste and corruption of the industrial city of New York. Later in the novel, after Myrtle Wilson is killed, her husband George looks to these eyes as he searches for an answer to his wife's senseless death.  Later, George declares, "God sees everything."  Similarly, a guest of Gatsby's, a middle-aged man with "owl-eyed spectacles" much like those of Ecklebury, notices that Gatsby possesses a genuineness because his leather-covered books are real.  Gatsby's car, a metaphoric representation of the flying Icarus of mythology, symbolizes his grand dreams that crumble and are destroyed.

Certainly, abundant color imagery enhances the significance of Fitzgerald's motifs.  For instance, the white and gold associated with Daisy from her name to her dress, her pearl necklace, and her car connote a purity that is corrupted by materialism at its center like the flower for whom she is named, just as Gatsby with his many-colored shirts and pink suits develop his idealism that is later destroyed as having become an imitation of himself, he stands in the moonlight on the Buchanan lawn and the "pink glow from Daisy's room," as he "watch[es] over nothing."

A lyrical Realist, F. Scott Fitzgerald successfully combines illusion and disillusion in his novel The Great Gatsby through his utilization of figurative language that provides an aura of mystery and romance to Jay Gatsby, whose "extraodinary gift of hope" and idealization of Daisy ends with his floating on his pool like a ghost. The Great Gatsby is almost a fairy tale.

Typically, one of the main goals of imagery is to help the reader to really sense what it is like to see or smell or hear or taste or touch the thing described.  Fitzgerald often employs imagery for this reason, but he also uses imagery to convey additional information without actually having to make Nick tell us that information (which might be boring and slow down the story's pace).  

Consider the beginning of Chapter III and the description of the laborers working to repair Gatsby's home from last weekend's parties and prepare it for next.  They toil "all day with mops and scrubbing brushes and hammers and garden shears" to mend the "ravages"; we can, thus, imagine everything from blasted shrubs to stairs made dirty by hundreds of feet and the furious shears and mops whose job it is to fix them back up.  However, the image serves another purpose, and that is to show us just how raucous and wild Gatsby's parties are; these are not refined people snootily smoking cigarettes and sipping cocktails.  These are loud people getting roaring drunk and out of control.  

Further, the "five crates of oranges and lemons" that arrive prior to each party present a vivid visual image, but this image also conveys to us the lavishness of these parties.  Gatsby spares no expense, and he gives his guests the very best of everything that he can, and this includes freshly squeezed juices created by the pressing of a juicing machine's button "two hundred times by a butler's thumb."  The "corps of caterers" who bring "several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree out of Gatsby's enormous garden" and the buffet tables crowded with "spiced" food that "glisten[s]" with "harlequin designs," some of it "bewitched to a dark gold" confirm the extravagance.  

In all, the imagery of Gatsby's parties conveys to readers the total lack of restraint, both in terms of what Gatsby provides for his guests as well as his guests themselves.  There's a sense of the manic here, with Gatsby's desperate attempts to impress, to become known, so that Daisy will take notice, as well as with his guests, who are, perhaps, trying to drown their discomfort or their growing knowledge that life will never be the same as it was before the war.  This is but one example of the effects of Fitzgerald's use of imagery to serve a much broader purpose in the novel.