Most of Chapter Three is devoted to a description of the party where Nick first meets Gatsby. The dominant impression of the chapter is that, while the parties are full of activity and fun, they are also a bit empty; this impression extends to Gatsby himself, who we meet in the chapter, and who may be physically at the party, but emtionally is absent or aloof.
There are plenty of details in the chapter to reinforce this. One thinks of Nick's stumbling on the owl-eyed man in the library, who is amazed at the lengths to which Gatsby had gone to create the illusion of an intellectual life (he is incredulous that the books are "real"). Or the passage in which some of Gatsby's guests speculate on his past (he either "killed a man" or was a spy). Or there is the wonderful description of Gatsby's smile: "It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."
Fitzgerald is able to establish this dominant impression right from the beginning of the chapter. Here is the first paragraph in its entirety:
There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.”
Imagery: The passage is rich with sensory detail. We are drawn into the passage immediately by the faint sound of music; we can see the "men and girls" flitting at a distance in Gatsby's gardens at night; we watch the men diving, hear the motorboats on the water, or the comings and goings of his cars. The impression is, above all, one of great wealth, of course, but also of tremendous activity. Gatsby's house seems less a residence than a resort.
Figurative language: Fitzgerald uses similes in the passage to help reinforce his dominant impression of the party. For example, he describes the "men and girls" as "like moths" flitting between the "whisperings, champagne and the stars." The people are ephemeral, coming and going without purpose, attracted to metaphorical "light" of champagne and the stars. The mood is at once mysterious and tantalizing. The word "moth" suggests the warm summer nights of Gatsby's parties; his gardens are "blue," lit subtly and seen from a distance. It is like we are seeing a dream.
Diction: Considering Fitzgerald's word choice reveals a kind of poetic compactness to his prose. There is a musicality to his diction that reinforces the sensory details he describes. For example, when he talks about how Gatsby's motorboats draw aquaplanes "over cataracts of foam," the word "cataracts" both suggests the visual image of rushing water and the roar of a large waterfall; the staccato nature of the word's pronunciation is congruent to the sound of the boats going by. It is a noisy word used to describe a noisy scene. A similar point can be made about his use of the verb "scamper" to describe the travels of his station wagon to and from the train station: "scampering" is a kind of playful running about, which reinforces the impression of vacant activity Fitzgerald is trying convey in the paragraph.
Like Gatsby himself, or his love for Daisy, the party is a kind of hollow exercise; it is like a desire that seems always just out of reach, and even if it could be had, would prove unsatisfying.
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