The Great Gatsby Chapters 5 & 6 Closed Passage Analysis

""I've got a man in England who buys me clothes.  He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall." He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray.  While we admired he brough more and the soft rich heap mounted higher-shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, with monograms of Indian blue.  Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily. "They're such beautiful shirts", she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds.  "It makes me sad because I've never seen such-such beautiful shirts before" (92).

Leading up to this passage is an increasing build up of emotion and tension.  We witness rekindled love, stress, fear, anxiety, and meloncholy.  This passgae is the break through of these emotions.  The shirts embody the people in society in New York at the time.  They are all varied, like the "sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel".  They have all come together to form a "soft rich heap".  The contradiction between soft and heap, which normally is rough and harsh, is joined by rich, thus explaining the duality of societal people.  The colors making up the shirts, "coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange" are all soft colors, but when put together, they would make a rainbow of the "stripes and scrolls and plaids".  The colors, also, when literally mixed together, make brown, hence the harshness deriving from the heap of shirts.  Another factor leading to the relation of society in this passage is the idea that some "man in England" sent these shirts.  Who is this man? Does he have any relation to Gatsby's wealth? He is some creator, manufacturer, yet his identity is a mystery-like God. God creates this array of humans and they put themselves together physically, creating a massive, growing heap.

This form in the passage also mimmicks the content.  "And" is used where commas should be, creating a breathless muttering of the scene.  The repeating sentence structure using "and" aids to describe the chaos of the shirts, and it is finally releaved in Daisy's "stormily" cry.  Like the storm that builds from the accumulation of clouds and energy, Daisy releases her emotions through tears.