Throughout the novel The Great Gatsby, the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, uses a great amount of both evil and negative word choice, with blissful and driven diction as well. When Nick describes Tom Buchanan’s physical characteristics, he says that “…he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body- he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage-a cruel body” (page 7). A very important factor in this example is the detail, length, and vocabulary that Fitzgerald uses to describe Tom. The fact that that Nick chose such harsh and negative words-such as “hard,” “supercilious,” “aggressively,” “strained,” and “cruel,”-to only describe Tom’s physical appearance creates an overwhelmingly negative and intimidating tone that surrounds Tom’s character. Being on the other end of the spectrum, Wilson-whom was broken down after his wife was killed-portrays a man in the midst of the ultimate agony, the death of a spouse. Nick explains, “…Wilson was reduced to a man ‘deranged by grief’” (Page 164). By choosing such a strong word as deranged-which is validated when Wilson murders Gatsby-Fitzgerald burns the agony into the readers own mind, and sets up the horrific crime of premeditated murder, an act that only a deranged human can commit.
Fitzgerald uses several different varieties of diction to describe objects, people, etc throughout this novel. I agree with the fact that he uses dark elaborations and negatively connoted diction and credit you for using great examples of how this is conveyed in the novel. Another example that could be used to support your idea could be when he describes the valley of ashes: “a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight” (23). Words like "ghastly", "ash-gray men" and "swarm up" all have a negative connotation and illustrate the dark setting which Fitzgerald wants to portray to the reader.
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