In this passage from The Great Gatsby, the diction, or word choice, and the content itself create a dream-like world.
The writer reveals Gatsby's thoughts as a "constant, turbulent riot"--irrational, rather than rational. "Grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night"--grotesque and fantastic situations and stories run through his mind. The "moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor"--"wet" light is a description one would not think of if fully conscious. Gatsby's thoughts are of "fancies."
Other words contribute to the dream-like state as well: drowsiness, oblivious, reveries, imagination, unreality, and "fairy's wing." The effect is certainly surreal and dream-like.
Incidentally, the writer here depicts a moment that the romantic poets considered to be the most creative moment a human mind experiences: the moment between waking and sleeping. The idea is that rational constraints are inactive at this moment, but full unconsciousness has not yet set in.
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