It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson's body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete.
Chapter 8 · Narrator
Context
As Nick and the servants carry Gatsby's body from the pool toward the house, they discover Wilson's corpse nearby in the grass—he has shot himself after killing Gatsby. This sentence marks the end of the novel's violent climax.
Analysis
The word 'holocaust'—meaning a complete burnt offering or total destruction—elevates the double death from crime scene to ritual sacrifice, suggesting that what has occurred is not merely murder and suicide but the inevitable consummation of the novel's entire system of desire, class violence, and misplaced justice. The almost casual syntax ('a little way off in the grass') and the subordinate placement of Wilson's death within a dependent clause enact in grammatical form the social marginality that defined Wilson in life—even in death, he remains an afterthought to Gatsby's story.
How to Use in Essay
Useful for essays on how the novel's structure and syntax reflect class hierarchies even in death, or for analyzing the word 'holocaust' as Fitzgerald's suggestion that the tragedy consumes both perpetrator and victim in a single ritual of class violence.