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NARRATIVE STYLE AND STRUCTURE Told in retrospect, the novel is a first person narrative in chronological order of the events of the summer of 1922 with Gatsby’s personal history revealed through various flashbacks spaced intermittently throughout the plot. However, before delving into the past, Fitzgerald starts his novel in the present where he evaluates the four main characters in the novel. If this evaluation was placed at the end of the novel, responders may have developed their own personal opinions on the value of these characters contrasting to the portrait which Fitzgerald was trying paint of them. Subsequently, the composer managed this problem by influencing the composer’s judgements from the very beginning of the plot using the convention of structure. Responders sympathise with Gatsby because they have been told he “turns out to be alright in the end“, feel contempt for the Buchanans (even before it is made clear exactly what they have done) because they are described as “foul dust” and respect and trust Nick as storyteller as he is self described as honest and non-judgemental. By conv