This quote from chapter 3 is a great example of Fitzgerald's poetic style. The quote is actually punctuated like this, and the comma after the word "before" makes all the difference:
A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby’s house, making the night fine as before, and surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden.
In this quote, the moon is what is doing the "surviving," but the sentence recalls human survival. The quote wraps up Nick's description of the first party at Gatsby's house he attends, the night when Nick first meets Gatsby. Over the course of the party, Nick observes and listens to other party-goers discussing their own experiences with survival; two guests have survived a World War I battle, and another enters the scene in a state, having survived his car crashing into a ditch moments before his arriving to the party. These two survival experiences are connected by Fitzgerald's word choice when the driver emerges from the car wreckage:
Half a dozen fingers pointed at the amputated wheel.
"Amputated" suggests a war injury, emphasizing the survival imagery prevalent in this part of Chapter 3.
The moon survives the party, giving off light, unchallenged by the lights of the party and refusing to be overpowered by the glow of the garden. The moon carries on shining and surviving, just as those men survived their brushes with death.
Friday, September 6, 2013
In the chapter 3, there is a sentence that reads: "A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby’s house, making the night fine as before and surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden." I could not get the meaning of "surviving." Does it mean the laughter and the sound still there in Gatsby's house? Or does it mean it is silent in Gatsby's house? Many thanks to you.
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