Abstract Paragraph #1 (#pinkelephants)

In Fitzgerald’s “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz”, the author creates a situation of riches to rags to explain how delirious the greedy can be by using rhetoric methods of imagery and personification. When “Braddock Washington was offering a bribe to God” (DBTR) the scene is really obscure and outrageous; He is even compared to “Prometheus”(DBTR) for his change of fate. Instead of receiving his make believe “Once upon a time” lifestyle that he dreamed to keep, Braddock is denied and becomes “magnificently mad” like an old “prophet” such as: Isaac, Moses or Abraham which Fitzgerald uses to show how highly Braddock thought of himself in the eye of God. After this scene that had seemed to come from God Himself, everyone rushes out of the cavern to safety, but only a few survive. Safe from any danger, the group discusses that even though Braddock is dead he wouldn’t go to Hades(Hell) because it “’was abolished long ago’”  which is suggested to make Mr. Washington less human and more like a god-like figure. Although the suggestion of Hades being abolished is odd since it is still considered to exist today. Using all these different methods of extreme imagery and personification, Fitzgerald creates a situation so abstract that pink elephants falling from the sky could potentially be a way to describe how delirious greed can be.