Fitzgerald uses a lyrical writing style in The Great Gatsby. The story is told from the point-of-view of Nick Carraway, who develops a romantic perspective on his neighbor, the doomed lover Jay Gatsby, during his summer living on Long Island and working in New York City. 

Lyrical writing captures emotions using beautiful and imaginative images. Fitzgerald's lyrical writing raises our sympathy for Gatsby, who we otherwise might see as just another low-life criminal grifter. We read the novel for the beauty of Fitzgerald's language and the way he uses it to make Gatsby a tragic symbol of the American dream.

Some examples of Fitzgerald's lyric prose illustrate the style and mood of this novel. It is a language filled with the rhythms and rich imagery of poetry. Nick describes, for example, his return to the Midwest as follows:

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.

That’s my Middle West — not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow.

More famously, Fitzgerald describes Gatsby at the end of the book, extending Gatsby's dream to make it universal to all of us:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning ——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Fitzgerald not only uses imagery and reflection, but also point of view, symbolism, and satire in "The Great Gatsby." The plot is told as part of a frame story, meaning a story within a story, from the point of view of Nick Carraway, one of the main characters, who has come from the midwest to learn the bond market. Nick learns much more in his encounter with Jay Gatsby. Through this first-person (“I”) narrative technique, Fitgerald is able to inject much of his own insight into the narrative by having Nick explain much of Fitzgerald's own sentiments about life. The symbolism, especially in the setting of the novel, is an important stylistic element. West and East Egg are two places with opposing values that can be contrasted giving insight into the morality of each place. Finally, Fitzgerald uses satire, especially when describing the lavish, vulgar parties Gatsby throws and the use of "Great" in the title of the novel. In the end, there is nothing really "great" about Gatsby or the east and Nick returns home to the Midwest where he understands the values of the culture.

What is the rhythm and style of writing in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald?

The rhythm and style in The Great Gatsby are dictated by Nick Carraway, the novel’s narrator. Nick Carraway is new to the both the East Coast and West Egg, moving there following the war as he tries to break into a career in the bond market.

The reader sees the characters, their actions, and New York City through the eyes of Carraway, a native Midwesterner. Carraway implements a lyrical and aesthetically pleasing rhythm to his writing style, which mirrors his perception of the Roaring Twenties. The Roaring Twenties was a period of economic prosperity and cultural edge which followed America’s involvement in World War I. This materialist period put an emphasis on decadence and social standing while showing a lack of regard for humanity, as evidenced by the constant infidelity and lack of remorse following death. Throughout the narrative, the characters seem more concerned with partying and displaying their wealth than living moral lives.

Carraway comments on Daisy’s voice, which reinforces this idea:

[She had] the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again...[T]here was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

The rhythm in the prose mirrors the rhythm in her voice and the rhythm of the Roaring Twenties, which obsesses the characters.

Unlike poetry, which depends on patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line, rhythm is established in prose by the arrangement of sentences, phrases and clauses. Stylistically, there are passages within The Great Gatsby that are lyrical in that they do not particularly propel the narrative or plot; their function is aesthetic. For example, Nick describes the moment that Gatsby decides that Daisy is the incarnation of what he wants from life:

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

The passage contains imagery, but it is rhythmic in that it offers a run of long sentences punctuated by the short and meaningful conclusion, "then he kissed her." Because this moment was transformational in Gatsby's life, the sentence needs the emphasis of standing on its own. To "romp like the mind of God" and strike a "tuning fork . . . upon a star" are both lyrical and ungrounded in reality but deeply evocative of the depth of feeling that Gatsby experiences at the moment he invests himself in Daisy.

Fitzgerald's writing style in The Great Gatsby is lyrical. The rhythm is poetic or cadenced, with stresses falling on certain words.

Lyrical writing uses the heightened language of poetry to achieve emotional intensity. In Gatsby, Fitzgerald, through narrator Nick, uses metaphor, symbolism and imagery. For example, people like Daisy and Tom are likened to "foul dust." Gatsby's dream of reclaiming Daisy is compared to no less than the American Dream of reclaiming a mythical paradise. The colors yellow and gold repeatedly symbolize money, while green, such as the green light at the end of Daisy's pier, symbolizes desire. The clock that falls from Nick's mantle when Daisy and Gatsby meet for the first time in five years represents time's fragility. Imagery, which is describing using the five senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell, abounds, such as in the long passage describing the preparations for Gatsby's immense parties or the scene in which Nick sees Tom and Daisy for the first time in Long Island, and the women's dresses and the curtains billow and twist in the breezes.

The rhythm of the writing is poetic, such as in the phrase "abortive sorrows of men." There, the stress fall on "aBORtive" and "SORrow," stressing the internal repetition of sound. This technique also adds to the emotional intensity of the story.

Fitzgerald's use of language builds sympathy for Gatsby, elevating him to far more than a criminal who came to a bad end.

Fitzgerald tells the story of Jay Gatsby through a first person narrator, Nick Carraway. The story is told in flashbacks, and there are flashbacks within flashbacks (i.e. about Gatsby’s past life), but the chronological order of the timeline is not as important as Nick’s moral observations and assessments of the people and events of the Jazz Age whom Fitzgerald is criticizing for their values. The novel’s style is realistic, therefore, because of the first person narrative. Nick is an eyewitness of the events and the reader believes that what has happened is the truth. Also, through Nick, readers get a glimpse of Fitzgerald’s own views – “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy.......”

The novel’s writing style is strong. The sentences are tightly written, yet contain elements of poetic style. There is a great deal of imagery and symbolism (East and West Egg, lights vs dark imagery, cool vs hot imagery, strength vs weakness imagery, etc.). There is also satire (especially when describing Tom Buchanan and Jordan Baker – i.e. Jordan is always “balancing something on her nose” – her precarious position, perhaps?) They rhythm is fast-paced. There are only 9 chapters and the action moves along quickly. There are not a ton of pages devoted to lengthy descriptions. It is almost journalistic in style.

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