Color Symbolism in The Great Gatsby: Unveiling Emotions through Colors

1. Essay Day! You are allowed to use: • Rubric (front table) • Rhetorical verbs handout (front table) • Breaking down a prompt handout

2. Staple together: • Rubric (write your name at the top) • Essay • Prompt / notes

3. The great Gatsby • If you need to check out a copy, come get one from me today! • Chapters 1-3 due Monday, 11/6 • Chapters 4-6 due Monday, 11/13 • Gatsby Chapters 1-6 Test on block day, 11/15-16 • Chapter 7- end due Monday, 11/27 • Final Gatsby Test on block day, 12/6-7

4. The Great Gatsby Color symbolism

5. “Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions” -- Pablo Picasso

6. Gold • Wealth • Happiness or prosperity: golden days, golden age • successful: the golden girl • extremely valuable: a golden opportunity

7. Gold • At Gatsby's parties even the turkeys turn to gold. "..turkeys bewitched to a dark gold" (p. 41). • Jordan Baker - the “golden girl” of golf - is associated with that color. "With Jordan's slender golden arm resting in mine" (p. 44); "I put my arm around Jordan's golden shoulder" (p. 77).

8. Yellow • Associate this color with the same traits as gold (wealth, materialism) • Gatsby’s outer self • "now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music" (p. 42). • In contrast to the golden girl Jordan, her admirers are only yellow. "two girls in twin yellow dresses"; "»You don't know who we are,« said one of the girls in yellow, »but we met you here about a month ago.«" "... we sat down at a table with the two girls in yellow" (all p. 44). • Daisy's daughter has yellow hair: "Did mother get powder on your old yellowy hair?" (p. 111).

9. White Honorable; pure; innocent • "Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white" (Daisy and Jordan, p. 24). • "they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight" (Daisy and Gatsby, p. 106). • In a El-Greco-like picture at the end of the novel "four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress" (p. 167). • "On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight, and I erased it" (p. 171).

10. White • When Nick Caraway visited the Buchanans he met two young women, of course Daisy and Jordan "They were both in white" (p. 13). • Even the windows at Daisy's house are white "The windows were ajar and gleaming white" (p. 13). • "His heart beat faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own" (p. 107). Associated with Daisy. She wears white clothing and has a white car.

11. Green Primarily for life or hope • This green light is across the sea where Buchanan's house is supposed to be. Gatsby said: "»You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock«" (p. 90); • "Now it was again a green light on a dock" (p. 90);” • ...when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock" (p. 171); • "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us" (p. 171). • Later the whole water between Gatsby and Daisy gets green "On the green Sound, stagnant in the heat,.." (p. 112). • Only once Fitzgerald used green for envy: "In the sunlight his face was green" (George Wilson, p. 117).

12. Grey • "grey little villages in France" (p. 48); • "The grey windows disappeared" (at Gatsby's house, p. 91); • "... a grey, florid man with a hard, empty face" (p. 97) • The Wilsons, living in the valley of ashes, appear in grey, except for Myrtle, when she enjoys the company of Tom Buchanan. • Wilson "mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity – except his wife, who moved close to Tom" (p. 28). • neutral • dull • not important

13. Blue • Depression • Unhappiness • Tranquility • Gatsby’s inner self • Although a lot of people are in and around his house, his gardens (plural!) are blue. "... ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves" (p. 144) • " ... a blue quickening by the window, and realized that dawn wasn't far off. About five o'clock it was blue enough outside to snap off the light" (p. 151). • The most unhappy place is the graveyard: "He had come a long way to this blue lawn" (p. 171).

14. Red • Love • Rage • Violence • Death • The inside of Buchanan's home is in red. "We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space" (p. 13); • "Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light" (p. 22).

15. Light • Hope / Life / Dreams • Gatsby desires the light at the end of the dock • Gatsby is reintroduced to Daisy on a dewy bright morning.

16. Dark Dark colors are the realities of Gatsby's dream-like life. The Valley of Ashes is the stark opposition to East and West Egg All of Gatsby's parties are held at night and are bright with a false light.