The Best Gatsby

Pg 44 "The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier, minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath--already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp joyous moment the center of a group and then excited with triumph glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light."

The party is in full swing and the happy, modernistic view of the 1920s is apparent through this piece. The party contracts and expands with new arrivals and is always changing. The change is welcome as everyone is laughing and having fun as the 1920s were all about. There are lights streaming throughout the area showing the promise of a new tomorrow and the ever present desire for Daisy Gatsby has, like the green light and the end of the dock. Laughter gets easier every minute and people are willing to spend more money, showing how drunk people are getting from their new freedom/fun, and alcohol. Girls are strutting through the place, like the flappers of the era wandering from place to place doing who knows what.

The party is the first glimpse Fitzgerald shows of the 1920s and modernism. As happy as it looks, this party is full of rich people who are somewhat displeased shown in different parts of the party. Earlier in the book, we see the Valley of Ashes and the despair that pervaded the entire area. Not only the poor, but the rich are shown unhappy, but for entirely different reasons. Back in the ashes everyone is just poor and looked down upon(literally by a billboard), and the party has an accusatory atmosphere(pg.50), as all the rich people drown themselves in self-indulgence. They destroy themselves with alcohol and flaunt themselves and constantly move around never forming a close-knit society. 

While they might seem happy, they're really drunk and, like Gatsby, are always reaching toward some light, always wanting more.