Choose two images and explain how the author creates a certain mood and tone with these images in The Great Gatsby.We walked through a high hallway...

In the second paragraph you cite from The Great Gatsby, Tom is the killjoy, which is appropriate since he will play the same role when he smacks Myrtle and when he puts a stop to the flirtation, as he thinks of it, of Daisy and Gatsby.  He causes a shift in this passage.

The writer, or more accurately, the speaker, relates the shift, however.  Overall, he accomplishes the shift by reversing the imagery. 

The white dresses  are "fluttering" and "rippling" as if just returning from a "flight," and the women are "buoyed up" as if they are floating in midair by an "anchored balloon."  The diction contributes to the visual imagery.  But the "whip" and "snap" and "groan" (diction contributing to sound imagery) become a "boom" and the shift occurs.  Instead of the light, airy imagery, and in addition to "boom," we get "shut," "caught," "died," and "slowly to the floor."  This juxtaposition--placing opposites side by side--of imagery, contributed to by the diction, enhances the effect of the shift.  The speaker reverses the imagery, and thereby reverses the tone. 

Of course, the light, poignant picture of the women floating is an illusion.  And like other illusion in The Great Gatsby, it is brought to an abrupt end.