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Situational Irony
Key Examples in The Beautiful and Damned
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.
Related Themes:
