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Situational Irony
Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis:
The Beautiful and Damned has a vivid, complex, opulent style that evokes the lifestyle of its richest characters. Fitzgerald's sentence structure mirrors the abundance of the story's setting as it consists of compound, complex sentences. It also reflects the glitzy extravagance of the story's imagery. For instance, in Chapter 3, the narrator describes a high-society party as follows:
Then the champagne—and the party assumed more amusing proportions. The men, except Richard Caramel, drank freely; Gloria and Muriel sipped a glass apiece; Rachael Jerryl took none. They sat out the waltzes but danced to everything else—all except Gloria, who seemed to tire after a while and preferred to sit smoking at the table, her eyes now lazy, now eager, according to whether she listened to Bloeckman or watched a pretty woman among the dancers. Several times Anthony wondered what Bloeckman was telling her. He was chewing a cigar back and forth in his mouth, and had expanded after dinner to the extent of violent gestures.
This passage contains many examples of rhetorical ornamentation. Not only does it have great sentence variety, but it also presents the perspectives of many characters to create a sense of the multifaceted party scene. Instead of saying simply that Bloeckman was making hand gestures, the narrator says he "expanded after dinner to the extent of violent gestures." This accomplishes in many words what could have been achieved in very few. The use of vivid imagery to visually depict characters also suggests deeper meanings beyond physical appearance; here Bloeckman's "violent gestures" suggest his passion, ambition, and perhaps frustration at losing Gloria to Anthony.
This style also functions to satirize the excesses of wealth and entitlement. Each sentence sparkles with prosaic virtuosity. But some of the words, phrases, and punctuation seem entirely unnecessary. While they might not be necessary to convey the physical truth of each scene, they are essential to convey the psychological truth about the characters, whose extravagant and self-aggrandizing behavior can best be expressed in flowery, purple language. Thus, the prose reminds readers of the characters' drama and impertinence. It is skillfully wrought and sometimes cumbersome in service of satirizing the characters' wasteful dissipation.
Related Themes:
