Clothing, Wealth and the Sun of Gatsby's Life
             Clothing, whether one would like to admit it or not, is a necessity. However, no matter who is wearing it, clothing is a measure of the class that a person is contained in. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald takes place during is the 1920's, a period during which new freedoms were being explored within fashion. Traditional clothing was being replaced by new, flashy attire that showed the wealth of people, as it had done in the past, of more extravagant fabrics and colors. The scene in which Jay Gatsby lays out and shows Daisy his clothes at the end of Chapter Five is a symbol of this wealth. Wealth and the severe importance of it is shown through Fitzgerald's' diction, references to other themes relating to wealth throughout the book, and as an explanation to why Daisy cries when Gatsby shows her the clothes. Gatsby shows off his clothing to Daisy as a way to impress her with his money and Daisy is thrilled because money is all she has ever known.
             F. Scott Fitzgerald's word choice, or diction, helps to create and add to Gatsby's wealth as seen through his clothes. When describing the clothes, Fitzgerald writes each kind of expensive fabric with an adjective before it. "...Shirts of sheer linen, thick silk and fine flannel..." By having this adjective in front of each noun to modify it, the emphasis is made on the richness and the glamour of the fabrics. Diction is also important several words later when Fitzgerald is describing the colors and prints of the fabrics. "...Shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaid in coral and apple green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue." (98) By writing about the fabrics with much use of the word "and" instead of a comma, the sentence is elongated and it makes the reader believe that there are more shirts than there really are because
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