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Similes
Book 1, Chapter 3: The Egotist Considers
Explanation and Analysis:
Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise in a lucid prose that aligns with Amory's desire to emulate aristocratic behavior. The prose is therefore practiced, erudite, and often overwrought. At times, however, the language relaxes into a downright conversational style. Consider the following scene:
In the old Princeton they would never have discovered Tanaduke Wylie. Tanaduke was a sophomore, with tremendous ears and a way of saying, "The earth swirls down through the ominous moons of pre-considered generations!" that made them vaguely wonder why it did not sound quite clear, but never question that it was the utterance of a super-soul.
With the help of an omniscient narrative voice, Fitzgerald is able to stack his description of Amory's superficial assessment of Tanaduke's talent with words of uncertainty: in any other sentence by another author, "vaguely" and "not quite clear" together might feel redundant, but in Fitzgerald's hands, the repetitive and circuitous style puts the reader directly into Amory's mind to see his circuitous and often amusingly shallow way of thinking. With the addition of a healthy dose of hyperbole ("the utterance of a super-soul") and an effective satire of self-important, pseudo-intellectual writing in Tanaduke's sentence, Fitzgerald conveys exactly how vapid Amory and his peers can be.
