Valley Of Ashes: Despair In The Great Gatsby

Despair in the Valley of Ashes

Imagine everyday waking up going to the same old boring job living a meaningless life because it is impossible to achieve the same life as the those living in the upper class. Gray suffocates the surroundings, except for a dingy billboard with blue eyes and yellow spectacles. This is a reality for Myrtle and George Wilson living in the Valley of Ashes because they are the lower class in The Great Gatsby. In this novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, he conveys the importance of the colors: gray, blue and yellow in relating the setting and social class in the Valley of Ashes. The description of the Valley of Ashes gray is constantly repeated,“Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up in an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations

from your sight” (Fitzgerald 23).

Gray is often associated with despair and the lack of emotion. Fitzgerald repeats the color gray in his writing, to show that the middle class live a meaningless and boring life compared to those living in the West and East Egg. The author uses gray to emphasize that the people in the valley are hopeless and in despair because they will never be able to achieve the same lives as those in the East and West Egg. In the Valley of Ashes, the lower class work their boring job every day and often don’t get caught in the wealthy class’ drama; however, Myrtle and Wilson get stuck in the middle of it, and do not have the luxury to use money as their escape path. The lower class is always being watched by, “The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic their retinas are one yard high” (Fitzgerald 23). These blue eyes not only represent the serious mindset of those in the Valley of Ashes, but the displeased watcher. Blue

symbolizes intelligence, truth and wisdom. Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, the watcher, holds all the answers and the truth. These wise eyes are alone with no other facial features, “They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose” (Fitzgerald 23). Yellow connotes with a warning, this foreshadowed when Nick thought something was wrong with the car, but learned it was George Wilson finding out about Myrtle’s affair. The author, Fitzgerald explicitly describe Wilson with gray eyes, “Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small gray clouds took on fantastic shaped and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind” (Fitzgerald 159). Gray is connected with seriousness and death. After Wilson loses his wife, his eyes showed his next step in his serious journey to seek revenge for Myrtle. F. Scott Fitzgerald takes advantage of using color to symbolize the importance of the setting and how that setting relates to the social class of many characters in The Great Gatsby.