- “But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room”(134).
The dreams of Gatsby and all that he had worked for died in this moment, where Daisy chooses Tom instead of Gatsby. Fitzgerald uses this long punctuation-less structure as a way to make the sentence feel uncontrolled and frantic. Perfectly modeling the way Gatsby feels; unable to change the past, but wanting to return to it. He can't defend himself to Daisy, because Tom's accusations are true, and in his attempt to convince Daisy that the accusations are false he does the exact opposite.
- “They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity” (135).
The short choppy phrases increase the effect of the action they describe often making it seem more violent or aggressive. The relationship between Daisy and Gatsby that had waited so long to bloom, now came to a sudden halt and the syntactical style helps emphasize how incredibly sudden it was. It also shows how distant Nick felt from Daisy and Gatsby, accentuating that they became like ghosts to him.
I find your explanations on both quotations for syntax very interesting, as they were something I did not even think about. Specifically, on the first quotation, I liked how you said the "long punctuation-less structure" was a way to make the sentence feel "uncontrolled and frantic," then further adding how this models the way Gatsby feels after Daisy chooses Tom, instead of him. Also, coincidentally, we used the same quote for asyndeton. I would also like to add onto your explanation of how the absence of conjunctions increases the effect of Daisy's end with Gatsby, as I described it as a desperation to seek for new love.
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