Personification is a literary device in which the author attributes human characteristics and features to inanimate objects, ideas, or anima Tuesday, 17 October Who was Ella Kaye? What implication was made about her visit to Cody, and what did she do to Gatsby?
Fitzgerald, F. The Great Gatsby. Cody was fifty years old then, a product of the Nevada silver fields, of the Yukon, of every rush for metal since seventy-five. The transactions in Montana copper that made him many times a millionaire found him physically robust but on the verge of soft-mindedness, and, suspecting this, an infinite number of women tried to separate him from his money.
The none too savory ramifications by which Ella Kaye, the newspaper woman, played Madame de Maintenon to his weakness and sent him to sea in a yacht, were common knowledge to the turgid sub-journalism of He had been coasting along all too hospitable shores for five years when he turned up as James Gatz's destiny in Little Girl Bay.
The narrator Nick is telling how Gatsby first came into being. Before he became Gatsby, he was named James Gatz; but when he met Dan Cody, who would start him in business and leave him inheritance, he decided to change his name to Jay Gatsby. When he met Gatsby, Dan Cody was soft-minded and was liable to be swayed by women.
In this part, I could not understand what "ramifications" and "by which" meant. Are the ramifications some flaws in his character derived from his soft-mindedness? Or the negative results, or rumors, caused by the fact that Ella Kaye pushed him out to the sea? And I would also like to know what "by which" means. Does that mean Ella Kaye played Madame de Maintenon by the none too savory ramifications?
If it is the case, what does "by" mean here? Did she use, or took the advantage of, the ramifications? Well, first, the whole beginning of your quote is basically saying: Cody was rich, but as he was getting older and presumably had a soft spot for women or wasn't super clever, many women tried to marry him for his money. Madame de Maintenon is actually a historical figure. At any rate Cody asked him a few questions one of them elicited the brand new name and found that he was quick, and extravagantly ambitious.
A few days later he took him to Duluth and bought him a blue coat, six pair of white duck trousers and a yachting cap. He was employed in a vague personal capacity—while he remained with Cody he was in turn steward, mate, skipper, secretary, and even jailor, for Dan Cody sober knew what lavish doings Dan Cody drunk might soon be about and he provided for such contingencies by reposing more and more trust in Gatsby.
The arrangement lasted five years during which the boat went three times around the continent. It might have lasted indefinitely except for the fact that Ella Kaye came on board one night in Boston and a week later Dan Cody inhospitably died. I remember the portrait of him up in Gatsby's bedroom, a grey, florid man with a hard empty face—the pioneer debauchee who during one phase of American life brought back to the eastern seaboard the savage violence of the frontier brothel and saloon.
It was indirectly due to Cody that Gatsby drank so little. Sometimes in the course of gay parties women used to rub champagne into his hair; for himself he formed the habit of letting liquor alone. And it was from Cody that he inherited money—a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn't get it. He never understood the legal device that was used against him but what remained of the millions went intact to Ella Kaye.
He was left with his singularly appropriate education; the vague contour of Jay Gatsby had filled out to the substantiality of a man. He told me all this very much later, but I've put it down here with the idea of exploding those first wild rumors about his antecedents, which weren't even faintly true.
Moreover he told it to me at a time of confusion, when I had reached the point of believing everything and nothing about him. So I take advantage of this short halt, while Gatsby, so to speak, caught his breath, to clear this set of misconceptions away.
It was a halt, too, in my association with his affairs. For several weeks I didn't see him or hear his voice on the phone—mostly I was in New York, trotting around with Jordan and trying to ingratiate myself with her senile aunt—but finally I went over to his house one Sunday afternoon.
I hadn't been there two minutes when somebody brought Tom Buchanan in for a drink. I was startled, naturally, but the really surprising thing was that it hadn't happened before. They were a party of three on horseback—Tom and a man named Sloane and a pretty woman in a brown riding habit who had been there previously.
Have a cigarette or a cigar. He was profoundly affected by the fact that Tom was there. But he would be uneasy anyhow until he had given them something, realizing in a vague way that that was all they came for. Sloane wanted nothing. A lemonade? No, thanks. A little champagne? Nothing at all, thanks. I'm sorry—. Moved by an irresistible impulse, Gatsby turned to Tom who had accepted the introduction as a stranger.
I remember very well. Sloane didn't enter into the conversation but lounged back haughtily in his chair; the woman said nothing either—until unexpectedly, after two highballs, she became cordial. Gatsby," she suggested. Sloane, without gratitude. He had control of himself now and he wanted to see more of Tom. I wouldn't be surprised if some other people dropped in from New York. Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go and he didn't see that Mr. Sloane had determined he shouldn't.
I'll have to follow you in my car. Excuse me for just a minute. The rumours were that Gatsby gained his fortune from his rich older friend Cody who employed Gatsby after meeting him and buying him clothes. He was employed to work on his yacht and to run it when Cody was under the consumption of alcohol.
Cody was a millionaire over many of times; he made all his millions in the copper business. When Gatsby met Daisy his dream of wealth and status however, was replaced by a dream of being with her.
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