Comparing Styles Exercise: Hemingway & Fitzgerald
Comparing Styles
The following selections, by two different authors, describe similar scenes. Compare and contrast the authors’ style, diction, word choice in view of their works’total effect.
Selection1-- FromThe Sun Also Risesby Ernest Hemingway
The dancing-club was a bal musette in the Rue de la Montagne Sainte Genevieve. ...Some one asked Georgette to dance, and I went over to the bar. It was really very hot and the accordion music was pleasant in the hot night. I drank a beer, standing in the doorway and getting the cool breath of wind from the street. Two taxis were coming down the steep street. They both stopped in front of the Bal. A crowd of young men, some in jerseys and some in their shirtsleeves got out. I could see their hands and newly washed, wavy hair in the light from the door. ... They came in . As they went in, under the light I saw white hands,wavy hair, white faces, grimacing gesturing, talking. With them was Brett. She looked very lovely and she was very much with them ... I was very angry. Somehow they always made me angry. I know they are supposed to be amusing and you should be tolerant, but I wanted to swing on one, any one, anything to shatter that superior, simpering composure.... there was a crowd on the floor and Georgette was dancing with the tall blond youth, who danced big-hippily, carrying his head on one side, his eyes lifted as he danced. ...We left the floor and I took my coat off a hanger on the wall and put it on.
Selection 2 -- From The Great Gatsbyby F. Scott Fitzgerald
There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden; old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles, superior couples holding each other tortuously, fashionably, and keeping in the corners -- and a great number of single girls dancing individualistically or relieving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the banjo or the traps. ... I was still with Jordan Baker. We were sitting at a table with a man of about my age and a rowdy little girl, who gave way upon the slightest provocation to uncontrollable laughter. I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger bowls of champagne, and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental, and profound...my eyes fell on Gatsby, standing alone on the marble steps and looking from one group to another with approving eyes. His tanned skin was drawn attractively tight on his face and his short hair looked as though it were trimmed everyday. ... a sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell.