Gatsby Color Symbolism

Robb 1

Haley Robb

Mrs. Linder

English II

19 March 2014

Color Symbolism in The Great Gatsby

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, color is symbolized through the cars, homes, and the clothing of the characters. The Great Gatsby is full of symbolism and colors. Many of the colors have to do with where the characters in the story live. Some of the characters live in East Egg, the others in West Egg. Nick Carroway moves in next door to Jay Gatsby at the beginning of the novel and throughout the novel tells the story of Gatsby’s life. The use of color symbolism is greatly used to show the past of the characters. It represents the past, present, and future of the characters. The novel mostly speaks of the colors in the characters past to help see who they use to be and who they became in life. In the novel Gatsby stares at the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock. The color white represents the color of Daisy’s clothes. Cream is the color of Gatsby’s car. Cream also is the color Myrtle Wilson wears.

The first color for this novel is white. White is the color of perfection. White represents a since of purity, hope and innocence. White represents new beginnings and a cleansing sprit. In The Great Gatsby, When Gatsby meets Daisy for the first time in five years he wears a white suit to show a sense of purity (Hoelzer 9). "Across the courtesy the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water” (Fitzgerald 5). Before Daisy was married she owned a white car.

Robb 2

The rooms of her house were white, and she wore only white clothes. The color shows purity but for these characters it is a since of false purity. White shows a purity of the characters that they long to have but no longer have. The second colo...

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...ad an easy life. The white Daisy wears is a sense of purity Daisy longs to have back in her life. White shows her hope for good in her life and the longing for something more than what she has. This color shows the “purity” the characters hope to have in their lives again but can never have again. Green represents the light on Daisy’s dock. Gatsby longs for the relationship he used to have with Daisy. He no longer has this relationship because he left and she found her husband. He longs for her back into his life. This color represents the life-long reach to earn her love back. Cream represents Myrtle mocking Daisy with no sense of purity in herself. She stands out when wearing cream to show her longing for Daisy’s husband but to show she is not the same as Daisy. Cream is also the color of Gatsby’s car and the car that killed Myrtle Wilson at the end of the novel.