Human beings associate colors with meaning, emotion, and actions. Red, a color of aggression is also a color of love. Grey is a color associated with depression and conformity. The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald contains complex characters that are further explained through their association with colors. Fitzgerald’s use of colors illustrates the duality of human actions and personality in society.
The color green represents hope, desire, ambition, and jealousy. Gatsby is enthralled by a green light, where at one point, “It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock" (Fitzgerald, 93). This light at the end of Daisy’s dock represents Gatsby’s final goal. Gatsby spent years living in West Egg,
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across from Daisy without meeting her once. It was as if they belonged to different worlds that didn’t interact, much like the stars and moon in space. However, their meeting is the culmination of Gatsby’s hope being fulfilled. No longer were they living in different worlds, but only across the lake from each other. However, hope can develop into greed and selfishness. Gatsby, a rich man is associated with money and the color green. However, he still feels trauma from the past when Daisy left him. He tells her, “It doesn’t matter any more. Just tell him the truth—that you never loved him—and that it’s all wiped out forever” (Fitzgerald, 132). He is selfish, forcing Daisy to say that she never loved Tom against her own feelings. He pushes his ideal image of Daisy on her, an image that she loves solely him. Gatsby is greedy for love, for acknowledgment and achievement. Through his association with the color green, Gatsby is given a background and character that were otherwise less pronounced. While the color green represents Gatsby’s hopes and desires becoming corrupted, the color blue represents the underlying reasons for his change.
Blue is the color of loneliness. In Gatsby’s “blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars” (Fitzgerald, 39). While there were many people at Gatsby’s parties there was no one he knew intimately. Gatsby was too fixated on Daisy to bond with others, making him a lonely man in a crowded party. Gatsby’s parties and their size also sets a contrast between the imaginary Gatsby and the real Gatsby in the partygoers’ views. This mindset is also related to Gatsby’s blind trust of his image of Daisy. He exclaims, “She only married you because I was poor and she was tired of waiting for me. It was a terrible mistake, but in her heart she never loved any one except me!” (Fitzgerald, 130). Gatsby trusts that Daisy will wait for him, since she did for a brief amount of time in the past. However, when he is arguing with Tom, Gatsby begins to break off from the tranquility associated with blue. He gets hysterical, trying to prove that Daisy loved him. Instead, his trust is shattered with Daisy’s admittance that she loved them both. Gatsby’s trust and loneliness led to the destruction of tranquility in the lives in Long Island. As Daisy’s confession broke Gatsby’s trust, his death tainted the tranquility of both the pool water and New …show more content…
York. Gold is a color associated with wealth, nobility, and materialism.
Daisy is described as “High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl” in her past. (Fitzgerald, 120). When gold is pure it does not get easily tarnished. However, when gold is mixed with other metals it becomes tarnished. It is due to these impurities that the tarnishing, or in Daisy’s care corruption of her interior occur. Daisy’s sole fault is her inability to wait for Gatsby, and then relying on Tom. At the same time, Daisy is easily swayed by a powerful male figure, allowing herself to be ordered around by them. With Tom, Daisy is forced to accept that her loving husband is anything but that and constantly has affairs. She is torn on the inside, but maintains a strong outer image, mentally gilding herself. Since gold is such an eye-catching color, it can also serve to divert attention from faults with the object it is on. “You can hold your tongue and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care” (Fitzgerald, 77). Jordan describes Daisy’s avoidance of alcohol as a method of timing when she shows weakness. While gold may cover up mistakes for a short period of time, it doesn’t last forever. Once the gold begins to dull, the gilded appearance disappears. Daisy’s weakness and her indecisiveness was revealed to Gatsby, and she ran away with Tom. A brilliant golden exterior of wealth and materialism
serves as a cover for Daisy’s weaknesses and shattered purity. Both colors and humans are multi-faceted and the use of one can help explain the underlying issues of the other. Green, blue, and gold emphasized in The Great Gatsby. By associating these colors with characters, and then with meaning we are better able to figure out the motivations and mindsets of characters. However, this too is a general theme of human life as we associate colors with people’s actions. The world is made of colors, and their meanings can aid us in both life and the literary world.
Green is a major symbol used in The Great Gatsby. This first example of Gatsby reaching out on his dock for the green light symbolises Gatsby trying to reach out for something he cant have; Daisy, old money, Tom’s
Colors are very important in novels because they help the reader understand the deeper meaning of the topic. The Great Gatsby novel is one of the most well-known books ever to be written. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the narrator, Nick Carraway, describes a tragic story of a rich man, Jay Gatsby, in search for his true love, Daisy Buchanen. Daisy and Gatsby were previously in love, but Gatsby left for war and Daisy left him for more money. Jay Gatsby constantly throws extravagant parties hoping that his true love will visit one night and they will fall in love again. Instead, Nick Carraway invites Daisy and Gatsby to his house in hope that the old couple will connect again. Daisy and Gatsby finally fall in love again after several years of loneliness. Eventually, their love ends in disaster. In the novel, color symbolism plays an essential role in the novel.
With regards to human nature during the Jazz Age during which he wrote, F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, would most likely agree with the general philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on human psychology. In a nutshell, the view of Rousseau was simply that man is naturally pure and free, only to be corrupted by society and the outside world. In connecting Fitzgerald’s use of appropriate color symbolism to the two parts of Rousseau’s view, we can see how he (Fitzgerald) is describing the nature of man in general terms through the story of Jay Gatsby. The colors mainly associated with Jay Gatsby throughout the course of the book are white, yellow, and blue, which, in order, represent the progression of his mental state and his outlook on life.
Upon first impression, one might believe Jay Gatsby is nothing more than a self-satisfied, well-to-do bachelor living in luxury in West Egg. However, as his story unfolds, the reader finds out that he is an industrious man and a hopeless dreamer. The quintessential colors of yellow, green, and blue are used by F. Scott Fitzgerald to describe Gatsby’s characteristics in his magnum opus, The Great Gatsby. Yellow, an incandescent color, stands for his vivacious outward disposition, the shallow people around him, and his seemingly self-indulgent spending habits, for which he has an ulterior motive. Green represents the extreme lifestyle changes Gatsby has made in adulthood and his staunch hopefulness in finding love. Blue is a symbol of the
Color symbolism is popular in novels written during the 1920’s. One such example is Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. There is much color symbolism in this novel, but there are two main colors that stand out more than the others. The colors green and white influence the story greatly. Green shows many thoughts, ideas, attitudes, and choices that Gatsby has throughout the story. White represents the stereotypical façade that every character is hiding behind.
One major symbol exhibited at The Great Gatsby is the symbolic green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. This green light has many different symbolic meanings, one of them being Gatsby’s hopes and dreams. Gatsby has many different longings which are represented by the green light. This light signifies more than just the distance between Gatsby and his lost love, but also the distance between the past and the present, and the promise that the future holds. An additional longing of Gatsby’s that goes along with the green light is his longing for money, another green substance controlling his life throughout the novel.
The device of symbolism is exercised numerous times throughout the course of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, but none more prominent than that of color. Fitzgerald uses color to not only develop the setting but enhance characterization. Through the colors grey, white, green and gold, Fitzgerald categorizes major characters and reveal their inner thoughts and driving forces. By using the color grey to represent characters like Myrtle and George, white to represent Daisy Buchanan and Nick Carraway and green and gold to represent Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald warps our vision and makes us see them through his eyes.
In the novel, The Great Gatsby, the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald uses color to symbolize character traits and feelings throughout the novel. Some of these colors are white, gray, and blue which were all conveyed in situations somewhat subtly in their respective events.
In our society today colors have a deeper meaning than just the pigments we see them as. They have varied meanings depending on the culture or circumstance, being anything from emotions to social classes. In The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald utilizes colors to help his readers determine where the main characters stand in their social rankings. High class and riches are a very important concept to the characters in this novel. Four of the main colors that he uses in this novel to portray their own unique meanings are red, blue, and gold. Each of these colors tend to cling to a certain character in The Great Gatsby and follow them throughout the novel, only occasionally blending into another character’s lifestyle.
In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, it tells the colors are used to symbolize of every character’s desire. For instance, Fitzgerald expresses the colors, such as the green light from the dock of East Egg that portrays to the main character hopes to attain his dreams. Also, Fitzgerald shows another color which is the blue eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg that represent to God that sees everything. Lastly, Fitzgerald illustrates the color red that symbolizes the love and violence. Therefore, the colors express aspirations, perceptions, and affections that Fitzgerald represent in the novel.
"... he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, as 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..." (Fitzgerald 21). In The Great Gatsby, the color green is frequent. It is more than just a color; it symbolizes many things, especially desire and hope. The color green also seems to be connected to Daisy and Gatsby's love for her old self. Indeed, green is used in The Great Gatsby to symbolize hope and desire for the past.
He does this by comparing Gatsby to Dutch colonists. This is because green is a representation for what both Gatsby and the Dutch colonists in the 1610’s want most in their lives. In the fifth chapter, Fitzgerald develops this symbolism when he writes, “‘You [Daisy] always have a green light that burns at the end of your dock.’ Daisy put her arm through his [Gatsby’s] abruptly… Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever” (92-93). Within this, Fitzgerald is arguing that the green light represents what Gatsby desires most, Daisy, and now that Gatsby has Daisy’s love once again, the green light has lost meaning. Although Gatsby had a significant dream, he put little effort into achieving it. He fought his way to wealth lazily through illegal actions, and later in life, he attempted to achieve his dream (Daisy’s love) through frivolous spending and flamboyant parties, which went unnoticed by Daisy for many years until she was directly invited to one. As for the Dutch, green represents New York’s untouched land, and a new beginning. This is proven when Fitzgerald writes, “the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors eyes-- a fresh, green breast of the new world” (180). This refers to the fact that the land of New York was discovered and colonized by the Dutch, who spent several hard months at sea and built a society from nothing with only hard labour. This discovery occurred in New York in 1615, and the Dutch created New Amsterdam. It was not easy, as their dream was achieved through tireless work and pure desire for success, which was once synonymous with the American Dream, a major moral code for the United States. This is significant because it shows a harsh difference between Modern and pre-Modern American
Colors do not simply differentiate objects, or to make them stand out from one another. They often emit a tone, a tone that develops as differently as the color spectrum itself. In literature, color symbolism is a strong device that readers can pick up with repetition and ease. By tracing colors in literature, the reader can develop ideas and themes. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses many different colors in many different ways to make the imagery stand out and allow the reader to connect concepts in the novel to one another. Fitzgerald attributes the color green to the green light to express Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for Daisy, as well as the color gray to the Valley Of Ashes to show the lack of life and decay of the American dream.
Colors have been used as symbolism for many years. It is easy to remember what each one symbolizes and has a lasting impression on people. These colors and feelings are then remembered throughout daily life, with the color yellow is often connected to happiness and wealth. In the fiction novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses colors to help convey the depth of each character and the truth behind each character. The colors run through the entire novel and often have double or hidden meanings than what it seems. When we are told the meaning to associate with a different color it is sometimes hard to disassociate the exact meaning we already gave it. The colors in the novel don't go against the ideas we have but enhance the background
These colors have many meanings in The Great Gatsby and in life people don’t understand.But if people would try they could see the true emphasis.Colors can even bring out emotions in people.They can help people through hard times and bad days.The color symbolism in The Great Gatsby is represented by the colors green , red , and blue.