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The great gatsby has many color with different meanings, throughout the novel. Some of the colors are white, green, blue and gold. These colors involve a few of the same people, however they do not mean the same thing. White stands for, morally unblemished, honorable. When Nick Carraway visited the Buchanan’s home 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). "They came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight..”(Daisy and Gatsby, p. 106). At the end of the novel somebody soiled Gatsby's house. Green stands for many of meanings, Fitzgerald used it mainly for "not faded",
like in "a green old age", or for hope. "nothing except a single green light" (p. 25). 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) Blue is the color of being depressed, moody, or unhappy. "In his blue gardens men and girls came and went" (p. 41). Although a lot of people are in and around his house, his gardens are blue. "... ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves" (p. 144). After Myrtle's death George Wilson and Mr.Michaelis are in a blue mood. " ... a blue quickening by the window, and realized that dawn wasn't far off " (p. 151). Golden stands for happy or prosperous, successful, extremely valuable. 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. "With Jordan's slender golden arm resting in mine" (p. 44); "I put my arm around Jordan's golden shoulder" (p. 77).Here even the dust in the rooms, usually grey, is shining.
Color Symbolism in The Great Gatsby & nbsp; Colors can symbolize many different things. Artists use colors in their paintings when they want you to see what they are trying to express. Like if an artist is trying to express sorrow or death. he often uses blacks, blues, and. grays. Basically he uses dreary colors. You automatically feel what the artist is trying to express. When the artist uses bright colors you feel warm and you feel happiness. In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald is like an artist. He uses colors to symbolize the many different intangible ideas in the book. He uses the color yellow to symbolize moral decay, decadence, and death. Then he uses the color white to symbolize innocence. He also uses the color green to express hope. Fitzgerald's use of the color green the strongest.
White is a colour which appears many times throughout the novel. At first, it is used to describe Daisy. The first thing Nick mentions when he sees Daisy in East Egg is that she is wearing a white dress. This colour is related to Daisy, it is "her" colour. Daisy´s clothes are always white, her car is white, she even speaks about her "white childhood". This colour represents her purity, her innocence, her unperturbed self.
When first introduced, Daisy was in a white dress, fluttering because of the breeze that came through the white window. Daisy has been dressing in white since she was a child, she talks about her beautiful “white girlhood” which shows that she had looked pretty and innocent since she was born (Fitzgerald 19). Since Daisy has been rich and white like the color of a daisy since she was a child, she is still the white person she is today. By having Daisy dress “in white” it shows her exterior, but not her gold interior. “Describing Daisy with the color of white… indicates that under the pure and beautiful appearance, Daisy owns a superficial, hollow, cold and selfish heart inside”(Zhang 42).
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
For most people, a certain colour may represent something meaningful to them. While in the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, many of the colours used in the novel are meant to represent something. The novel’s setting is in East and West Egg, two places in New York. Our narrator, Nick Carraway, lives in the West Egg. Along with living in West Egg is a friend of Nick’s, Jay Gatsby; a character that is in love with Daisy Buchanan. Unfortunately, Daisy is married to Tom. As the plot unravels, the reader notices the connection between certain colours and their importance to the novel. The use of colours within The Great Gatsby symbolizes actual themes, as grey symbolizes corruption, blue symbolizes reality, and green symbolizes jealousy and envy.
Shmoop Editorial Team. "Colors in The Great Gatsby." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 10 May 2014. .
To Gatsby, Daisy represents innocence and purity; however, Fitzgerald uses different shades of white to veil her corruption. Daisy is solely described as "dressed in white", she powders her face white, and she mentions her "white girlhood". The millionaire describes this perfect princess figure to be "high in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl." On the other hand, Fitzgerald portrays the way of life in West Egg as a wretched place when "four solemn men dressed in suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn it at a house - the wrong house. But no one knows the woman's name, and no one cares."
Colors are a major part of literature, used in countless books and movies to help depict symbolism and themes. In The Great Gatsby, colors are used in abundance. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses a multitude of colors ranging from grey to pink. However, three colors are used more frequently: green, gold, yellow, and pink. Fitzgerald uses a large amount of green, a color used in literature to represent money and fortune. However, throughout The Great Gatsby, green continuously represents hope and dreams. Fitzgerald also uses a surplus of yellow and gold throughout the book. Yellow typically symbolizes happiness and joy, but in The Great Gatsby yellow represents failure and death. In using gold, Fitzgerald represents fortune and power. The third
In the book The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald uses a vast amount of colors to represent characters in the book. For instance, Gatsby is one of, if not, the main character in the book. Every single color in the book has to do with Gatsby. The three main colors in this book or most used colors are red, yellow, and black. These three colors seem to have the most meaning. When it comes to Gatsby, these colors represent him in many ways.
Fitzgerald used several different colors to underline his ideas in the novel. First, he uses gold to represent riches and successfulness. An example of this is when Carraway is walking around Gatsby’s party with professional golfer, Jordan Baker’s “slender golden arm resting in [his]” (44). She is also described as having a “…golden shoulder” (77). Second, Fitzgerald uses the color yellow to signify fake gold. For instance, at one of Gatsby’s parties, there are “two girls in twin yellow dresses” (44) that are admiring Baker. The color of their dresses is meant to show that the girls were less glamorous and rich than the golden Jordan. Lastly, white is used to symbolize purity and innocence especially when depicting Daisy Buchanan. When Carraway visits the Buchanan house for the first time in the book, Daisy and Jordan “…were both in white” (8). Also, even the windows at the Buchanan house are “…ajar and gleaming white” (8). Furthermore, Daisy is described as having a “white face” (110) and is said to have had a white c...
The color white appeared many times throughout the book. It is used in the first chapter by Nick when he sees Daisy and Jordan in East Egg. “They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house.” (Pg. 8) In this passage, white is used to describe Daisy’s and Jordan’s innocence and purity. However, in page 24 the real characteristics of Daisy are revealed, “Our white girlhood was passed together there our beautiful white”, this tells us that when Daisy was younger she was innocent, but now she has changed.
Gatsby’s clothes are very significant in representing his wealth. During this time period washing your clothes was not as simple as putting them in the washer, they had to hand wash them. Gatsby wearing white shows that he doesn't need to worry about getting his suit dirty and then trying to clean it because he can go and purchase a new one. The silver and gold are easily tied towards his wealth because silver and gold are expensive to obtain so Gatsby wearing all three of these colors really indicates his wealth.
The use of a green light at the end of a landing stage to signal a romantic
This color always stands out. For example, many artists use it to draw attention to something in their paintings. Fitzgerald uses the same practice mentioned, using the color white to draw attention to very important features of the characters. One time when the white color stood out and played an important role in portraying a character's image, was the first time Gatsby met Daisy after five years, “An hour later the front door opened nervously and Gatsby in a white flannel suit, silver shirt and gold colored tie hurried in” (Fitzgerald 89). In this scene, Gatsby is shown as a child. He is so excited to meet Daisy, overflowed with joy that he can’t control his actions and thus doesn’t act like an adult. The white color adds to the innocence and purity of Gatsby’s mood. Most of the time, white is associated with Daisy and other women. As Nick was recalling the first time he went over to Daisy’s house, he stated: “Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire” (14). Daisy commonly wears white dresses to show her “innocence and nobleness,” but she was only trying to create an image that she liked. In reality, she was probably one of the worst, heartless and careless people so it is obvious that she merely pretends to
Symbolism is important in developing the theme in The Great Gatsby. From start to finish of the novel, Fitzgerald uses colors to show and point out the important ideas. The main one was the green light representing hope. Daisy had a green light at the end of her dock, who lived in East Egg. Gatsby, who would look at the light, lived across the water in West Egg. Gatsby’s green light, was Daisy, “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock,” (Fitzgerald 92). Although Daisy was a married Catholic women, she did see Gatsby until his death. Daisy was described with the color white. White purely means innocence, “They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back after a short flight around the house,” (Fitzgerald 8). Another symbol in the novel was Dr. T.J. Eckleburg ,who represented God/truth. He was a blue billboard in the Valley of Ashes, “The eyes... are blue and gigantic.., They look out of no face, but, instead, from pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose” (Fitzgerald 23). At several points in his poem, Cummings mentions the four seasons almost out of nowhere. In line 3, for example, he breaks from his story about "anyone" to simply say, "spring summer autumn winter" (Cummings 3). Cummings wants to remind us that life actually isn't about progress. It's just a circle that keeps going