A cacophony is a harsh, discordant mixture of sounds;
            a din, racket, noise, clamor, discord, dissonance, discordance,
            uproar.
In The Great Gatsby, the best
            examples of cacophony come in Chapter 3, during Gatsby's party.  The atmosphere is like
            a Roman Carnival: a bunch of drunk people, couples fighting, a full orchestra,
            out-of-control dancing, cars crashing, and lots of booze clanking
            about.
Here's a sample:
readability="12">
There was dancing now on the canvas in the
            garden; old men pushing young girls backward...and a great number of single girls
            dancing individualistically or relieving the orchestra for a moment of the burden of the
            banjo or the traps. By midnight the hilarity had increased.
            A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian, and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz, and
            between the numbers people were doing “stunts” all over the
            garden, while happy, vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward
            the summer sky.
Later, we
            hear the car wreck:
readability="10">
However, as they had left their cars blocking
            the road, a harsh, discordant din from those in the rear
            had been audible for some time, and added to the already violent
            confusion of the
            scene.
In this chapter,
            Fitzgerald vividly describes the reckless and careless behavior of the party-goers.  The
            car accident will foreshadow the one later in the book when Daisy runs over Myrtle.
             Like Nick, we are being introduced to the decadence of the Jazz
            Age.
 
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