What’s Up With the Epigraph?

"Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!" – Thomas Parke D’Invilliers

First of all, who is this Thomas Parke D’Invilliers? What, you’ve never heard of him? Well, that’s because Fitzgerald made him up. This is breaking the normalcy – if not the flat out rules – of epigraphs, which usually use someone else’s words and not the author’s. On top of that, this fictional Thomas guy made an appearance in another one of Fitzgerald’s novels as a typical college intellectual in This Side of Paradise. So basically, we get an idea of Fitzgerald’s trickiness and perhaps literary hubris before the story even begins.

Now onto what the epigraph actually says. These words seem to indicate somebody using material deception in order to win a girl. In other words, bling yourself out so that a woman who would otherwise not notice you (perhaps because she’s in Natalie Portman’s league) will sit up and pay attention. This is precisely what Gatsby does – he wears a "gold hat" (not literally, but figuratively) to win Daisy.