:)

As I have stated previously, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is largely dialogue-based.  Therefore, I find it humorous that his “shining star”, Mr. Jay Gatsby, seems to have trouble with words.  He’s speech is choppy, and he seems to have trouble masking his emotions when needed.  His observations are crass.  Basically, he has no verbal filter and regard for how people may feel to what he has said or asked never enters his mind.  Based on this, his possession of this grand lifestyle filled with garrulous people seems highly unlikely.  This must be where that famous smile has come into play.  Upon meeting Gatsby for the first time, Nick remarks that Gatsby’s smile “face--or seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.  It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that , at your best, you hoped to convey.  Precisely at that point it vanished--and I was looking at an elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd” (Fitzgerald, 48).  I think this enchanting smile has helped Gatsby get more than just friends; it has helped him get everything he wants and possibly everything he doesn’t.