Techniques In Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Written in 1925, F.Scott Fitzgerald’s supreme American novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ is told from a first-person view which is narrated by a man named Nick Carraway. Nick reflects on the life-story he had heard and witnessed, involving the life of a determined and rich individual known as Jay ‘Gatsby’. The novel has had many adaptations, including a graphic novel by Nicki Greenberg. Nicki Greenberg’s unique use of graphics portrays the cast of characters in a bizarre and abstract style, allowing the reader to view and interpret the same tale transformed with elements of fantasy and surrealism in the same world. Through clever personifications, a unique art style, photo-album format and delicate typography, the graphic novel is able to morph the reader’s interpretation of the novel from a modern and realistic setting to an unusual world full of fantasy. In the original novel, F.Scott Fitzgerald portrays the love of Gatsby’s life (and Nick Carraway’s cousin), Daisy as a beautiful young woman from Louisville. Having been extremely popular and wanted among the military officers close to her home, Daisy was courted several times before her eyes found Jay Gatsby, who was rumoured to have lied about his wealthy background in order to convince her that he was truly worthy of being with her. Daisy can be seen as a carefree figure, a woman who is influenced by wealth as well as her social class in society. However, despite her casual outward appearance, she is quite clever which is demonstrated when she ‘hopes’ that Pammy would be a ‘beautiful fool’ , suggesting that women are better off being clueless of the current situation in this part of society than being intelligent and aware of what is going on. “Tom and Daisy...were careless people.”, Nick states from his observations during his journey in New York, which further shows the true nature of Daisy and her husband, Tom. Nicki Greenberg’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby also shows this as she portrays Daisy as a dandelion-like puffball creature with delicate, dangly limbs further emphasising her sense of aimlessness and carefree nature. Another example of this, is how Nicki Greenberg portrays Tom Buchanan; a hulking ogre with with giant ears and a hairy chest. Greenberg’s representation of Tom Buchanan further shows how aggressive of a character he is. The graphic adaptation successfully fleshes out the personality of the cast in the novel, and represents them with different creatures to further show their true characteristics. The graphic adaptation uses a unique and surreal art style to capture how melancholic the tragic tale of Gatsby truly is. Fitzgerald’s original novel describes the atmosphere of Gatsby’s parties equal to the ‘behaviour associated with an amusement park’, suggesting that everyone there was raucous, loud and immature, due to the …show more content…
Nick describes each and every character throughout the book through his own personal views, however is not overly-biased and therefore is a reliable justification of the characters themselves. Nicki Greenberg shows this intricate and exquisite language by placing the text boxes in a smart and neat structure, the text impacting the scene with dynamic font and conveying emotion. The same typography is used throughout the book however, changing position to allow the reader to scan through the whole panel before moving on, suggesting that there are all sorts of things to do at Gatsby’s party, as it is full of luxurious attractions. When Nick is drunk from the alcohol, the environment appears vague and Nick’s retelling is not exactly accurate. The careful placement and use of font significantly displays this by swirling the letters around and on occasion flipping the text vertically so it appears upside down, to indicate that the world is spinning and everything is out of motion in Nick’s mind. By using fitting typography and a different approach to more scenes than others, the graphic novel is able to convey and express Fitzgerald’s descriptive and imaginable writing in an artistic and creative …show more content…
Unlike most graphic novel interpretations, Nicki Greenberg’s adaptation is able to retain and maintain the strong plot and message of the story, emphasising several features including typography, nostalgic graphics, a surreal art style and creative personification and allows the reader for a second time, to take a step back and fully absorb what the visually-pleasing graphic novel and the story of Gatsby’s life truly has to