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Explore the symbolism of colors in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, including green, blue, gray, lavender, yellow, and white. Discover how these colors represent key themes and characters in the novel.
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Gray Green White Color Symbolism Blue Lavender Yellow
Green Green reappears several times during the book, representing the struggle that Gatsby has between his wealth and his dreams. Green is a mixture of the colors blue and yellow; it represents Gatsby's dreams and his wealth hopelessly tangled together. There is a green light at the end of Daisy's dock, which suggests Gatsby has kept his dream of the Daisy he knew and loved before he made his fortune, and the fact that their relationship will always be affected by money. Green also traditionally represents spring or a new beginning. Gatsby sees the green light as hope for a relationship with Daisy. Also, in the end, Nick associates Gatsby's dream and the green light with the American dream, "a green breast of new land" (189) where people could come to start over.
Blue Also used many times, blue allows the reader to add an element of "other worldliness" to the story. It shows the reader the dreams and thoughts of the characters of the novel. Dr. T. J. Eckleburg has enormous "floating" blue eyes, which are said to be God's eyes. They are believed to view the world as God himself would. At one point Myrtle is clothed in a blue dress, which is present to represent her dreams of escaping her mundane life and running away with Tom. Most importantly, Gatsby's gardens are described as being shades of blue and are initially shown as a place where people could escape from the world and be out of touch with reality. In direct relation to Gatsby, the gardens were an essential part of his life. As Nick says in the story, "He'd come a long way to this blue lawn" (189).
Gray Gray allows the reader to notice that the dreams of each character are slowly disappearing. It lacks life and happiness, which allows it to be used as a symbol for just those things. The color gray, lacking shades of blue, represents the disappearance of dreams. Objects described in The Great Gatsby using the color gray (such as The Valley of Ashes) are also objects which are described as things one cannot escape from. There are no romantic dreams to which people cling in the Valley of Ashes. F. Scott Fitzgerald describes the people who drive gray cars and live near the Valley of Ashes with shades of gray because they lead a life that does not have dreams. Their lives consist mainly of work, and they have no hope of escape. Jordan's eyes are also gray. Jordan does not have a deep love of anything. Love to her is superficial. She has no plan for her life and no dreams for her future.
Lavender Although not used as much, lavender is the color of indulgence. Lavender is the color of indulgence and is used mainly in reference to Gatsby. The rooms of Gatsby's mansion are decorated in lavender, and he wears lavender shirts. One of the twins in yellow also mentions that he sent her a new dress with lavender beads after hers was ruined. Lavender represents things which were done that were not necessary, things that the rich characteristically do.
Yellow To tie itself with lavender, yellow illustrates the greed and wealth of the characters. Yellow is one of the main symbolic colors in The Great Gatsby. It represents the wealth and extravagance of the rich. It also demonstrates how careless the wealthy can be though they are considered "high class" with all their money. Gatsby's car, with which Daisy kills Myrtle, is yellow. Yellow is also a shade used to connect a person's snobbery with her money--Daisy is referred to as "the golden girl," Jordan's hair has an "Autumn leaf yellow" tint, Gatsby wears a gold tie, and the twins at one of Gatsby's parties are dressed in yellow.
White White is used to describe the original innocence of the women who associate with Gatsby. White is the color of innocence. It is how the girls, Daisy and Jordan, are dressed in the beginning before their true characteristics are revealed. It is also the major color of Gatsby and Nick's wardrobe. They are both portrayed as innocent. Gatsby never loses his childlike faith in his relationship with Daisy, and Nick claims he never lies and that he is one of the few honest people he knows.
The Decline of the American Dream The American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure an era of decayed social and moral values In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast.
The Decline of the American Dream Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s fortune symbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging. Nick and Gatsby, exhibit the newfound cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from the war The various social climbers and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsby’s parties evidence the greedy scramble for wealth The clash between “old money” and “new money” manifests itself in the novel’s symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. Like 1920s Americans in general, fruitlessly seeking a bygone era in which their dreams had value, Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished past—his time in Louisville with Daisy—but is incapable of doing so. When his dream crumbles, all that is left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is move back to Minnesota, where American values have not decayed.
Honesty Nick is able to admire Gatsby despite his knowledge of the man's illegal dealings and bootlegging. Ironically, it is the corrupt Daisy who takes pause at Gatsby's sordid past. Her indignation at his "dishonesty," however, is less moral than class-based. Honesty does not seem to determine which characters are sympathetic and which are not in this novel in quite the same way that it does in others. The standards for honesty and morality seem to be dependent on class and gender in this novel. Tom finds his wife's infidelity intolerable; however, he does not hesitate to lie to her about his own affair.
Gender Roles Fitzgerald writes about gender roles in a quite conservative manner. Men work to earn money for the maintenance of the women. Men are dominant over women, especially in the case of Tom, who asserts his physical strength to subdue them. The women in the novel are an interesting group, because they do not divide into the traditional groups of Mary Magdalene and Madonna figures; instead, none of them are pure. Myrtle is the most obviously sensual, but the fact that Jordan and Daisy wear white dresses only highlights their corruption.
Violence is a key theme in The Great Gatsby, and is most embodied by the character of Tom. The end of the novel, of course, consists of violence against Gatsby. The choice of handgun as a weapon suggests Gatsby's shady past, but it is symbolic that it is his love affair, not his business life, that kills Gatsby in the end. Violence The other source of violence in the novel besides Tom is cars. A new commodity at the time that The Great Gatsby was published, Fitzgerald uses cars to symbolize the dangers of modernity and the dangers of wealth.
Religion The most obvious is the image of the “Valley of Ashes," which exemplifies America's moral state during the "Roaring Twenties." This wasteland is presided over by the empty eyes of an advertisement. The equation of religion with advertising and material gain are made even more terrifying by the fact that the eyes see nothing and can help no one (for example, this "God" can do nothing to prevent Myrtle’s or Gatsby's deaths).
The societies of East and West Egg are deeply divided by the difference between the nouveaux riche and the older moneyed families. Class Gatsby tries desperately to fake status, even buying British shirts and claiming to have attended Oxford in an attempt to justify his position in society. Ultimately, however, it is a class gulf that separates Gatsby and Daisy, and cements the latter in her relationship to her husband, who is from the same class as she is.
The Great Gatsby is primarily a novel of ideas, with a heavy reliance on symbolism- including objects as well as symbolic action. The lack of a firm moral foundation is symbolized through the way the characters drift aimlessly from place to place or party to party.
The Green Light The green light represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and at the end of Chapter I he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. In Chapter IX, Nick compares the green light to how America, rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the new nation.
While Ch. 1 ends with the symbol of Gatsby’s dream, Fitzgerald directly contrasts that to the symbol at the beginning of Ch. 2. The “foul dust” that will ultimately destroy Gatsby’s dream.
The Valley of Ashes The valley of ashes between West Egg and New York City consists of a long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes. The valley of ashes represents the modern world. It is rife with the waste produced by the manufacture and pursuit of wealth. It is a physical desert but it symbolizes the spiritual emptiness of modern society. It represents the moral and social decay that results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves with regard for nothing but their own pleasure. also symbolizes the plight of the poor who live among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.
The Eyes of Dr. T J Eckleburg They may represent God staring down upon and judging American society as a moral wasteland, though the novel never makes this point explicitly. The connection between the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg and God exists only in George Wilson’s grief-stricken mind. This lack of concrete significance contributes to the unsettling nature of the image. If this is the case, this God is an absent God, created by a man who wanted to make more money. The eyes also come to represent the essential meaninglessness of the world and the arbitrariness of the mental process by which people invest objects with meaning.
Everything the reader learns comes through Nick Carraway- either through Nick’s own experience or what he has learned from others. The events are narrated NOT in the order in which they occur, but in the order Fitzgerald wants them presented. All of the complex attitudes and emotions that contribute to the tone of the novel are conveyed through Nick’s consciousness.
To what extent, then, does Fitzgerald wish us to accept Nick’s point of view?
Fitzgerald wants us to accept Nick’s judgments. Nick’s opinions about Gatsby and the other characters are meant to be accurate! While they help us as the reader, they don’t always serve Nick well. He refers to himself as honest, and he seems to be so. He is fundamentally good-hearted and has a highly developed moral sense. Unfortunately, the events of the novel nearly destroy him. This state of mind colors everything he says as he relates the story.
Nick has been left lonely and directionless. He has no faith in anything anymore. He has essentially been alienated from the society of the Roaring Twenties. He wants “no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.” His experiences with Gatsby “temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.”
Nick ends up emotionally isolated from everyone BUT Gatsby by the time the afternoon in New York City is over. He begins by telling the reader that Gatsby “represents everything for which I have an unaffected scorn” but eventually finds himself drawn to Gatsby despite his shady past. He chooses to believe the version of Gatsby that Gatsby shares. He NEEDS to believe this. After his illusions are shattered by the afternoon in New York City, he remains steadfast in his connection to Gatsby.
WHY? Nick loves Gatsby’s yearning, his imaginative idealism, his reaching for some indefinable glamorous goal. Nick refers to this as “an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness.” Gatsby’s vision is a crude, corrupted form of the American Dream. He stands for everything that Nick despises. For Nick, and Fitzgerald, the American Dream has become a dead and hollow thing. Gatsby’s failure becomes tragic as he is destroyed by what he has pursued and loved so innocently and wholeheartedly.
In the end... Nick’s final judgment of the Buchanans and of Jordan Baker is devastating. They’re a rotten crowd…You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together!!”
Fitzgerald's world view A strange mixture of cynicism and outraged idealism, of despair and hysterical vitality Life in Western civilization has become meaningless. There are no genuine spiritual values remaining. The American Dream has lost its meaning. All that remains is the crude pursuit of wealth and the superficial glamour that wealth provides.
