Big Compare Question: How do writers use repetition to create meanings in their texts?

Repetition is an important narrative device incorporated throughout the three texts, and is also used to a great extent to add and consolidate meaning within the texts.

F.Scott Fitzgerald uses repetition subtly in The Great Gatsby to link otherwise unrelated characters, events and settings and this can create an otherwise hidden meaning within the novel. The buchanan mansion is linked to the valley of ashes through repetition, “The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile,” links to “the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile,” through repetition of “quarter of a mile.” The seemingly factual phrase acts as a bond between the two settings and creates an underside to the buchanan mansion. This creates meaning by linking the mansion to ash, an important symbol throughout the novel. The ash in the valley of ashes is necessary for the expansion and growth of New York, it is the waste product of development and labour, the buchanan mansion through this link is therefore built upon this ash adding the meaning that the Buchanan’s house and wealth is built upon other peoples hard labour and work. It highlights the injustice in the American Dream, the only way to achieve the dream in The Great Gatsby is to use others, Fitzgerald also suggests that wealth as a whole in America is entirely dependant upon the labour of the working class, this subverts the traditional American belief that the USA is a country lacking an aristocracy.

Fitzgerald also includes heavy repetition throughout the novel of the colour gold/yellow, he describes the “pale gold odour” of flowers, the “toilet set of pure dull gold”, Gatsby’s car is a rich cream colour later described as yellow, Daisy is the “golden girl”, Myrtle Wilson’s house and many other occasions. The reason Fitzgerald repeats the colour so often is to subvert common association of gold with wealth and of wealth with greatness. Instead gold in The Great Gatsby represents amorality, corruption and death. Gatsby’s car results in Myrtle’s death, Gatsby himself attained his wealth through corruption and “the golden girl” shows signs of amorality throughout the novel. During the roaring twenties wealth was seen as something profoundly good and as something essential to the American Dream, Fitzgerald wants gold to have a different meaning in Gatsby to decouple wealth and greatness. Fitzgerald wrote in a 1931 essay “echoes of the jazz age” that the roaring twenties “was an age of miracles” but he wants the reader to be aware of the miracle creating power of gold. 

In The Great Gatsby the visual field is often described with noise and the auditory field is described with colour. The repetition of visual and auditory coupling functions in The Great Gatsby as thematic coupling. When Nick first sees Daisy and Jordan in the novel he describes the “whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.” This coupling of a visual image with noise helps to intensify a neutral image, this gives this specific section a great thematic weight and when joined with Tom’s “boom” and “the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor” it can be seen as an allegory for the entire novel. The repletion of visual with noise is specific to Nick and Gatsby, this repetition allows Fitzgerald to create tension by removing sound from description. One key moment of tension in the novel utilises this effect when “no telephone message arrived” the silence of the telephone creates a strictly visual scene it is because of this sudden lack of sound that the “rose becomes grotesque” the noise had been a part of the way Gatsby viewed the world, suddenly stripped away from him. Fitzgerald would not be able to create this level of meaning without repetition of the cross linking of the visual field with the auditory. 

Cormac McCarthy uses repetition of a limited vocabulary to create a sparse style that compliments the sparsity of the end of the world. Words like grey are often repeated throughout the novel creating a dark mood and displaying the menial lives that the man and boy live without leisure in the novel. This repetition is used to create meaning when McCarthy connects it to “the world shrinking down about a raw core of pursuable entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true.” This quote acts as a subversion of the book of genesis, the repetition of the words emphasises the undoing of the actions of God. This creates meaning in the text in the sense that the whole end of the world is the undoing of God’s creation of the world at the hands of man. A reading of the text in this way also gives evidence that the end of the world in The Road is man made, possibly through nuclear war or climate change.

A recurring theme throughout The Road is that of good vs. evil, this is shown by the repetition of the boy describing people as “good guys”  the repetition of this creates meaning in the novel by making the reader constantly question the meaning of goodness. Goodness in the world of The Road is far from what a 21st century audience perceives goodness to be, this also links to a key theme in The Road, whether or not goodness and morality is an inherent part of humanity or whether it is something that is taught.  The boy’s obsession and repetition goodness is surprising considering the man is deliberately trying to distance himself from the boy to make his inevitable death less of an ordeal to the boy. So goodness could be an intrinsic element of nature that the boy  naturally has, it is through the repetition of the good vs evil binary that McCarthy creates meaning.

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge consistently uses repetition to add meaning to the ballad, Coleridge refers to the death of the albatross at the ends of parts: 1,2,3 and 5. This repetition acts as a constant reminder to the reader of the didactic purpose of the ballad, the Mariner is being punished for his transgression and for not respecting or loving nature. This enforcing of the didactic purpose makes the poem a more authentic lyrical epic ballad, an aspect of an epic ballad is its ability to be passed in the oral tradition, its message is supposed to be its defining element. By repeating references to the mariner’s transgression at the end of parts, Coleridge makes the ballad more authentic and therefore allows the reader to be more immersed and creates a sense of the story being “ancient” making its overall message more understandable.

Coleridge also uses repetition in part II, in stanza 2 of that part the shipmates view of the mariner’s transgression is “ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, that made the breeze to blow!” this changes in 1 stanzas time “ ’twas right, said they, such birds to slay, that bring the fog and mist.” Through this repetition Coleridge emphasises the fickle nature of the both the shipmates and of humanity itself, it is also proleptic of the judgement and punishment the sailors face for making “themselves accomplices in the crime”. This repetition allows Coleridge to communicate that it is often through humanity’s fickle nature that we condemn ourselves.

Coleridge also repeats a heavy amount of religious symbolism and imagery throughout the ballad. This can allow differing interpretations of the ballad, the first being that The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a christian allegory, the other being that it is a pantheistic text. Evidence for the christian allegorical reading comes from repetition of christian imagery such as “christian soul” the importance of the “kirk” and the structure of the ballad being reminiscent of the stages of prayer. The mariner’s punishment and the idea of a bird sent to a ship also evoke biblical imagery. The pantheistic argument comes from the repetition of nature and the preternatural acting as God themselves, Coleridge suggests throughout that by praising nature mankind can receive the same relief as prayer to a theistic God.