Flashbacks: Both Useful and Confusing

The Great Gatsby
p. 145-156

I find F. Scott Fitzgerald's use of flashbacks both useful and confusing; I guess you already knew that by reading the title of this blog, but there is a requirement of ten sentences on these things isn't there? Anyway, so at times Nick will be narrarating, and he will narrarate straight into a flashback, and before I know it, I have traveled back in time. Sometimes these flashbacks are told directly by another character, but mostly they are communicated through Nick relaying what he has been told. Thus, with the absence of quotation marks to indicate a small anecdote about another character, I often confuse Nick's narrarating of the present happenings with his telling of the past. For instance, on page one hundred fifty, there are two different breaks in the page, yet the entire page and the few surrounding it are Gatsby's flashbacks. After one break, the story picks up again with "He did extraordinarily well in the war. He was a captain before he went to the front, and follwoing the Argonne battles...." (Fitzgerald, 150). The paragraphs above this section discussed Gatsby's love for Daisy, therefore my confusion with this new information was a result of my failure to see the point in knowing it. Flashbacks have been sporadic throughout this novel, forcing me to be alert and contemplative. As I continue to read The Great Gatsby, the flashbacks have all proven useful; however, after my initial reading of most of them, I am usually confused.