‘The Great Gatsby’, composed by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a powerful display of symbolism and allows the reader to a deeper understanding of social status and wealth. Social status and wealth are an important part of the narrative and the 1920’s. By utilizing the symbolic significance of colours and the Valley of Ashes to enhance and depict the crevice between the diverse social levels in New York. The author has skilfully incorporated many references to the colours when referring to Gatsby and Daisy in order to show how the characters display their wealth. So too does the narrative focus on wealth as means of the characters desires to achieve their dreams, by creating distinct social classes which includes old money, new money, and no money. …show more content…
The major colours associated with ‘The Great Gatsby’ are Green, Grey, White, Yellow/Gold, Blue, Red and Black. The colour green stands for a variety of meanings and it is additionally connected with something Gatsby cannot accomplish, The American Dream. In addition, green is also associated with money, in the book Gatsby says the line “voice is loaded with cash” (107) about Daisy. The gloomy colour grey is tied in with the valley of ashes and shows underdevelopment and unhappiness. White commonly symbolizes perfection, as in The Great Gatsby, it addresses false perfection. Jordan and Daisy often wear white; also, Gatsby wears white when meeting Daisy for the first time in the book. Yellow addresses corruptness as Gatsby's car is yellow and Gatsby is a corrupt man. Fitzgerald cleverly exploits the colour blue and puts it together with environments …show more content…
“This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens” (26). The colour grey covers the Valley of Ashes like a cloud, meaning lifelessness. The lower classes live their everyday lives in the valley of ashes and all want to leave but cannot. An example being Mertle, while trying to escape the ashes she is horrifically killed. This illustrates how the American Dream is impossible to achieve, unless you have a wealthy family like Tom Buchanan. When he visits the valley of ashes, he brings out the difference between the rich and the poor, two very different lifestyles and very different people. The Valley of Ashes not only symbolises the poor, it also symbolises the personality of the rich. Stuck up people that only are living to please themselves and try their best not to give the lower class a chance to escape the ashes. The Valley was created through industrial dumping, leaving the people and the environment to suffer. Every day ashes add to the ashes, as the pile gets bigger, leaving the American dream harder to
To reverse the setting and corresponding tone of good wealth and high fortunes, Fitzgerald utilizes the setting of Valley of Ashes. Described as "a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges” (Fitzgerald 23), the Valley of Ashes represents the lower class and poverty. It is a “solemn dumping ground" (Fitzgerald 23), symbolizing the upper class destruction and the way they exploit the hard working "ash-gray men" (Fitzgerald 23). Thus, the established atmosphere delivers hopelessness of acquiring the profound and well known American Dream. The "grey land" (Fitzgerald 23) that covers the Valley of Ashes is very significant as it indicates depression, sadness, misfortune, and persistent poverty. In addition, the ashes illustrates their
In literature, colors are often purposefully chosen for different characters to represent the character’s personalities. In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the colors green, yellow/gold, and gray are used to represent the attributes of the colored person or place.
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
However, although the owners of industry found themselves better off wages didn’t rise equally, causing the gap between the rich and poor to grow markedly. Parkinson argues that the settings “represent [these] alternative worlds of success and failure in a modern capitalist society”. The valley of ashes symbolises this failure and moral decay, acting as a foil to the affluent “world of success”, East Egg, and highlighting that the lower classes must suffer to support its existence. This setting is introduced in Chapter 2 and is described as where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens”. The personification of the environment creates the sense that these failures are rooted in the land, suggesting that poverty is an inescapable part of American society.
During the roaring 20’s, achieving financial success and finding true love were two key elements in achieving the American Dream. For many people, their mission in life was to reach the American Dream which they believed would assure them happiness. A dream for many americans during this time period was to become rich and fortunate. Money made a difference in social class and social status, so becoming rich and fortunate would show others your position in the socio economic ladder. People were becoming so obsessed with trying to upgrade their social status and achieve the American Dream that they would force themselves to do whatever it takes to gain prosperity and find love. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the theme of social
The Great Gatsby is full of symbolism, colors, for example. Throughout the book the author uses them to represent different themes of the novel. Some of these colors are white, yellow, grey, green, pink, red and blue. However, I picked white and green for my commentary because I think these colors have a special meaning different from the others. White is mainly used to describe the character’s innocence, fakeness, and corruption. While green represents Gatsby’s hopes, ambitions, and dreams. In addition, sometimes green symbolizes the jealousy of certain characters.
Wealth, through time, has always been something that everyone has searched for. Sometimes money and being wealthy is something to strive for; however, people tend to let their desire for wealth turn into a corrupted dream. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who consistently shows his distrust towards materialistic people, such as Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy. He shows how “old money” and “new money” people are flamboyant, in an excessive way, when it comes to showing off their wealth. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald portrays wealth as corruptive while distinguishing clear lines between old and new money. Both social classes represent how people are affected negatively from materialistic aspirations.
The valley symbolizes the difference between the higher class and lower class society. The lower class contains factories, run down buildings, mountains of trash and a working class community whereas the higher class is filled with elegant buildings, wealthy citizens, and extravagant lifestyles. “A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity,” (17). The term ‘ashes’ is not figurative and the land is covered in ash from the many factories that help supply the wealthy like Tom and Daisy, but hurts the lifestyle of those who live in the Valley of Ashes like, George and Myrtle Wilson. The story contains some irony in that the citizens of West Egg and East Egg look down on those who live in the Valley, but those who work and live in the Valley of Ashes contribute greatly to the higher class and their lifestyle. Fitzgerald uses the Valley of Ashes to advance the plot and enhance the theme of the story by expressing the poverty within this land and how it affects the
The Great Gatsby displays social status as a theme to distinguish settings and to portray the mentalities of people belonging to different social classes. The characters are distinguished by their wealth and where they live. Throughout the 1920s and onwards, class was essentially separated into three categories; old money, new money and no money. ‘Old money’ families have fortunes dating back for centuries. Over time they have built up promising and worthwhile social connections. They are often ‘two-faced’, in that they hide their superiority and fortune behind civility. ‘Old money’ lives in East Egg, a place for the elite and those who are inherently wealthy. Then there is ‘new money’. To fit into the class of ‘new money’ their fortune needs to have been made during the 1920s boom, therefore they have no superior social connections. ‘New money’ lives in West Egg. West is commonly associated with the Wild West, which in turn is relevant to the wild behaviour the West Egg residents display with their excessive drinking and uncontrollable parties. Evidently, they tend to overcompensate for the lack of social superiority with extravagant displays of wealth. Typically, the ‘no money’ class get forgotten, due to their lack of significance and ‘importance to the wealth’. They inhabit ‘The Valley of Ashes’ and are often seen as “the victims of the
“The Great Gatsby”, by F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts the vast social difference between the old aristocrats, the new self-made rich and the poor. He vividly interprets the social stratification during the roaring twenties as each group has their own problems to deal with. Old Money, who have fortunes dating from the 19th century, have built up powerful and influential social connections, and tend to hide their wealth and superiority behind a veneer of civility. The New Money made their fortunes in the 1920s boom and therefore have no social connections and tend to overcompensate for this lack with lavish displays of wealth. As usual, the No Money gets overlooked by the struggle at the top, leaving them forgotten or ignored. Such is exemplified by Jay Gatsby, Myrtle Wilson and Tom Buchanan. Their ambitions distinctly represent their class in which Fitzgerald implies strongly about.
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.
Colors in The Great Gatsby not only create vivid images of the novel’s setting but also represent the intersection between character and theme. Although most colors appear in the novel, the mentions of yellow and gold are significant, particularly in telling the story of wealth and longing that Fitzgerald emphasizes. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald symbolizes yellow and gold as money and materialism, using these very colors to paint the female characters in his novel as possessions in the avaricious society of the Roaring Twenties.
The Valley of Ashes symbolizes absolute poverty and hopelessness. “This is a valley of ashes, a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.” The lower classes who inhibit this
The Great Gatsby is full of symbolism. Colours, for example, are used to represent many different things; some even represent a theme of the novel. White, yellow, grey, green are just some of the colours which Fitzgerald uses in a special way, because each of these colours has a special meaning, different from the ones we regularly know or use.
Socioeconomics are the study of the economic activity and how it could be influenced by society. The idea that the economy has the ability to be improved by society was called social progress. The Great Gatsby had a lot of social progress shown through how the main characters, Nick Carraway, Jordan Baker, Jay Gatz, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, and Myrtle Wilson, all lived in their Long Island houses. Part of that social progress was beneficial to their economy and some had been harmful to it too. Socioeconomics in The Great Gatsby are illustrated through different interactions between the characters like Daisy & Gatsby, Myrtle & Tom, Nick & Jordan, in addition to the places they called home.