Appearance

"He smiled understandingly--much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life... I was looking at an elegant young roughneck" (Fitzgerald, 48).

The first description of Jay Gatsby that you're given in the book is a vivid description of simply his prowess. Fitzgerald seems to use a large paragraph to describe the appearance that Gatsby holds. In The Great Gatsby, appearance is a feature that holds a lot of relevance. If you didn't have this beauty, you were not fit for the upper hierarchy that the people of the east and west egg were made of. Fitzgerald uses his diction to show the importance of beauty in the 1920's as he describes Gatsby as having "one of those rare smiles... that you may come across four or five times in life". Even though some may be described with a very bland personality, like Wilson who is "a blond, spiritless man, anaemic, and faintly handsome", they will always hold some beauty, which is all you need to be successful in the world. Also, Fitzgerald shows the prevalence of beauty in women's standards during this time by saying that they must only be "a beautiful little fool" to be of some value to society. This quote exemplifies the oppression that women faced during the 1920's as they were only worth what their beauty made of them.