Role Of Materialism In The Great Gatsby

Through his development as a person and a writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald fashions the theme parallel to how he fashions himself into a lyrical novelist: “in my new novel I’m thrown directly on purely creative work—not trashing imaginings as in my stories by that sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world” (Coleman). His developed style involving the theme is shown in Nick Carraway’s forthright wording. The “formal and serious register, the complexity of which is vivid in describing inner feelings and emotional changes, helps to highlight the narrator’s complex feelings towards his era” (Liu 664). Whether some sentences appear to be formal or simple, short or long, vague or descriptive, all of the “different sentence structures

If one breaks green down into its original elements, yellow and blue would appear; thus, the blue of original ambition and the yellow of materialism commingle to create the green of the desire. Gatsby’s obvious goal is Daisy, who he believes he can win back through physical luxuries and elaborate parties. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock is his lifelong aim: “he believes that only if he tries his best to pursue it, he can touch the light, hold his hope, and realize his dream,” but due to the distance, the light signals that “his dream is doomed to fail” (Zhang 41). Gatsby admits to Daisy in the fifth chapter that she “always [has] been a green light that burns at the end of [the] dock” (Fitzgerald 98). By this point, Gatsby acknowledges his yearning; however, the new Daisy differentiates from his imaginary Daisy. The divergence festers the significant essence he sought for in Daisy and, thus, forces the green light to be unattainable, symbolizing the beauty and the fragility of the American Dream. Lastly, Gatsby’s death brings the disillusionment of the dream and loss of faith in the grasping along with new ambition and the recognition of the ceaseless struggle to fully grip the dream: “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our

At the Valley of the Ashes, Mr. Wilson, a working man, encounters Nick and Buchanan of the wealthy class; Nick recalls that “when he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes” (29). The sight of a luxurious lifestyle seen in the self-made wealthy sprouts the promise of possibility in the blue eyes of an unappreciated, laboring being. Later in the novel, Wilson stares at the blue eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, saying “God sees everything” (167). These blue eyes surrounded by yellow spectacles serve as the dream of the workers eclipsed by the corruption of materialism. God watches over the wasteland, following the people’s ambitions and acknowledging the extreme pollution. Additionally, blue symbolizes Gatsby’s loneliness, demonstrating the fail of his dream to win back the heart of his past lover; the “blue leaves” and “blue lawn” of his garden reveal the melancholy within Gatsby’s inner heart (159, 189). “In the end of the novel, when Nick sees the blue smoke of leaves in the air, he realizes that the disillusionment of the American Dream is inevitable in such a roaring age” (Zhang