What is Life?
Early in the novel, the narrator lays out a brief, but rather comprehensive biography of the life of Anthony Patch’s grandfather, mother and father. The brevity is partially explained by the fact that by the time he turned 12, the only close relation still living was his grandfather. And so, at the tender age of 11, Anthony had already developed a philosophy, of sorts, about life:
“So to Anthony life was a struggle against death, that waited at every corner.”
The Byword of Contempt
Poor Dick Caramel. One of Anthony’s best friends since college, life in the real world started out great with a well-received novel sure to establish a long and glorified literary reputation. While Anthony wastes the best years of his life talking about becoming a writer, Anthony has been busy actually writing. Unfortunately, most of that labor has been directed toward writing for money and as a result, the promising literary reputation early on has instead become one in which Anthony is forced to metaphorically observe that Caramel’s “corpse was dragged obscenely through every literary supplement” as he had been reduced to a “byword of contempt.”
New York, New York
One of the techniques that Fitzgerald toys with in this novel is setting off certain scenes as if they were written as a play complete with stage directions. Fairly early on, one of these sections is written as a dialogue taking place between what might be termed the Perfect Form of Beauty and a mysterious Voice in the White Wind in which Beauty—who gets reborn in new earthly form every century—learns where she is to be resurrected next. In metaphorical terms, anyway.
“It is the most opulent, most gorgeous land on earth--a land whose wisest are but little wiser than its dullest; a land where the rulers have minds like little children and the law-givers believe in Santa Claus; where ugly women control strong men”
Irony
In the first 47 words of the novel, the narrator uses four different metaphors to figuratively describe that most difficult to define of all literary terms: irony.
“the Holy Ghost of this later day”
“the final polish of the shoe”
“the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush”
“a sort of intellectual “There!”
That's Our Maury!
Maury Noble—friend to Dick and Anthony from their college days—is the kind of guy always recognized as the smartest person in the room, but never confused with being the happiest person in room. His intelligence is a gift, to be sure, but a gift that comes with strings attached. In Maury’s case, that string is the ability to see right through the illusions that other confuse with reality and as a result nobody can describe him better than he can describe him. Especially in metaphor:
“I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.”
