What Does Yellow Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald is about a man named Jay Gatsby who is very hopeful that his love for Daisy Buchannan, who did not wait for him, and she would still love him too. Nick Carraway the narrator of the book is also the next-door neighbor of Mr. Gatsby and gets the inside scoop of his life in the summer of 1922. Throughout the Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses white, yellow, green, and blue to portray the American dream, the reality, hopefulness, love, the future and money. He uses these colors all over to talk about the characters because these colors represent their life, but Fitzgerald also uses these colors to represent the bad that comes out of them as well, the inevitable.
The color white is mostly used

When Nick went to Gatsby’s party for the first time, he found Jordan and then, “She held my hand impersonally, as a promise that she'd take care of me in a minute, and gave her ear to two girls in twin yellow dresses, who stopped at the foot of the steps"(42). Jordan is using Nick to show to other girls, but she truly doesn’t feel anything, and the girls are artificial and just wanting to meet Jordan because she is famous. Yellow mostly means reality with fake money and the fake American dream. These girls are fake people who just come for the party. They have old money, and it is mixing into the new money crowd, but the old money could also be fake money, from how they inherited it and how their families made it. When Nick is describing the Valley of Ashes he looks at the house of Myrtle Wilson and says, "The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it, and contiguous to absolutely nothing"(24). Nick is saying that their reality and true American dream is to only live in the valley of ashes. Myrtle and George live in this house, which is their reality that they live in the valley of ashes. After a while Myrtle becomes very desperate and tries to make her situation better and having the real American dream with Tom, but she doesn’t realize that she is destine to have

Before Nick and Gatsby were friends, Nick saw Gatsby going outside to look at green light and, “…he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away…” (20-21). Gatsby is reaching for the green light which is Daisy Buchannan and he hopes to be able to fulfill his dream to be with her. The green represents the future-hoping Daisy will be in his futures as well. As it says, that it is very far away, which is saying it is impossible to reach which is foreshadow in the book, because he will never be able to reach it and fulfill his dream to be with Daisy. This is also representing the society as a whole and the aspiration to achieve the unfeasible materialistic American dream! He will never be able to hold on to Daisy and live the life he has made up for her to be in. When Nick was referring to the Valley of Ashes he said, "The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic-their retinas are one yard high"(23). The eyes of God are big and looking at the unrealistic dreams that He sees everyday. While people of both statures drive past the Valley of Ashes, the billboard watches them and he takes in the all the dreams that they