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Essay on nick carraway of the great gatsby
Essay on nick carraway of the great gatsby
Essay on nick carraway of the great gatsby
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The valley of ashes is a place between New York and the West Egg, where the eyes of T.J. Eckleberg lie. The valley of ashes is a place in which carries many trials for each of the characters, holding their hardships while they all try to reach the common goal of the American dream. The valley of ashes isn’t a place of wealth or prosperity; however every person must first pass through it to get to a better place. In his novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the valley of ashes, the eyes of T.J. Eckleberg, and the light symbolically. The valley of ashes is a place that is located in between New York and the West Egg. The Valley of Ashes is a very desolate plain where middle class people live and work. It is a very gray valley where New York’s ashes are dumped. There is a small foul river located on the side of the valley of ashes perhaps to symbolize the people’s bad, negative attitudes toward their own lives. Nick says in detail “The valley of ashes I bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour.” (28). The middle class people not only live there, but they also work there by cleaning up the ashes. Nick explains “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 men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.” (27). Mr. George Wilson is a prime example of a middle class man who lives and works in the valley of ashes. He owns a gas station and a car shop, where he works from the early du... ... middle of paper ... ...efore us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning---. (189) F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the valley of ashes, the eyes of T.J. Eckleberg, and the light symbolically in The Great Gatsby. The valley of ashes represents the shallow and hollow lives of the rich people, the sad, sorrowful, and selfless lives of the middle class people, and struggles and pains that every character endures. The eyes of T.J. Eckleberg represent God and how he watches our every move, while also representing George Wilson’s love for his wife, and his drive to keep his family alive. The light is another important symbol in this novel. The light symbolizes Gatsby’s perseverance to get Daisy and also on a bright, successful future. Each symbol is critical in this novel to understand the common American dream.
Through these quotes, Fitzgerald believes the American dream is unattainable in the Great Gatsby because some people in the novel had advantages unlike others. A major instance of said inequality would be applied to the citizens who are living in the Valley of Ashes; representing the forgotten poor underclass with lost hopes and dreams who have failed to live up to the American dream or even got a chance to start. Therefore, the Valley of Ashes is a blatant symbol of just how “dead” Fitzgerald really believes the American dream to be, and how he wants the readers to interpret it. Fitzgerald wrote “.ashes take the form of..men who move dimly and are already crumbling through powdery air..immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades.”. Tell’em
The story of Jay Gatsby is a romantic one that actually began years before. However, his romantic story turns into a troubling one when we realize that he is not the man he seems to be. The story of Jay Gatsby is not only filled with romance, but with secrecy, obsession, and tragedy. The symbol of Jay Gatsby's troubled romantic obsession is a green light at the end of the dock of Daisy Buchanan, a woman to whom he fell in love with five years earlier. The green light represents his fantasy of reuniting with Daisy and rekindling the love they once had. This light represents everything he wants, everything he has done to transform himself, and ultimately everything that he cannot attain.
Although we spent little time here in the novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald utilized “The Valley of the Ashes” to its fullest. In this novel “The Valley of Ashes” symbolizes a great number of issues of morality in this society. “The Valley of Ashes” was located between New York and the two Eggs. “The Valley of Ashes” is a barren wasteland made of the ashes of which were dumped there as a byproduct of various modern items and was polluting this area. Although the valley of ashes is treated as ““nowhere”, a place to be driven through on the way to “somewhere” by the characters from both East and West Egg.”(Angela D. Hickley 1), Fitzgerald riddles it with heavy symbolism. Fitzgerald uses “The Valley...
... York City consists of a long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes. It represents the moral and social decay that results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves with regard for nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of ashes also symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.
The Valley of Ashes is a place between the West Egg and Manhattan. This is no typical road, as Scott Fitzgerald uses the desolate area as landscape imagery to symbolize the theme of death in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald uses a passage filled with landscape imagery to paint the theme of death in the reader 's mind.
Throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, there are many prominent symbols that pass, seen or unseen, to a reader. The very noticeable symbol is the billboard that contains The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which are compared by one character with “The eyes of God”. A lesser known, but still prominent, symbol is the color green, like the light off of Daisy’s dock across the bay. One of the least thought of symbols though is the place known as “The Valley of Ash”. These symbols are very important to Fitzgerald’s book and reflect of the time of the 1920’s.
In the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, based on the actions and morals of people buring the jazz age, many symbols are used. The most important symbol is the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. The eyes are a huge builboard in the center of the valley of ashes, it symbolises much more then an advertisment. The eyes of Dr. Eckleburgis a symbol of God watching over all the coruption that is takng place such as: lying, affares, abuse,and iligal activity.
Throughout The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald conveys how there are many sides to social class and the explosion of the workers just how myrtle is an example of exposure of the working class and the valley of ashes the plight of the poor. This shows the real America and how there's no “dream”. Through the description of the valley of ashes which represent the social class Fitzgerald conveys the plight of the poor.
One of the most important symbolisms of the valley of ashes is moral and social decay. For instance, in the novel, Nick talks about “the eyes of Doctor T.J Eckleburg” and he describes the eyes as “Gigantic” and “they look out of no face” (Fitzgerald 26). These eyes might represent god in some way because these eyes watch over everyone. But why would God be in the valley of ashes? Fitzgerald uses the symbolism of god to reveal the decay of religious values because God is in a way replaced by money. Moreover,
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
Fitzgerald described it as the “Valley of ashes”, where the reader can come to conclusion that it was where many factories and stuff were located, or at least the jobs in which one did not have to go to school for... “ where ashes take forms of houses and chimneys”.“ 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 men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight”(page
The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is known for having themes of wealth and luxury. However, in chapter 2, the reader is exposed to an opposite theme. The narrator, Nick Carraway, describes the valley of ashes a place as “fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens”. Shifting to today’s terms, the valley of ashes can be as a “dumpster”, not only physically, but socially, picturing the desolation and poverty found in that place. The author also introduces the figure of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s eyes, which represent the eyes of God watching the decay of human morals and the increase in iniquities during the 1920’s. There lives Mr. Wilson and Mrs. Wilson a couple that are bound to frustration
In The Great Gatsby, the Valley of the Ashes illustrate the inequality between its inhabitants and that of West Egg and East Egg, in terms of social standing and income, as well as the hopelessness of poverty resulting from the inability of its inhabitants to rise up the socio-economic ladder. Thus, the valley represents the failure of the Dream that America promises, which is the ideal of equal opportunities for all, associated with the New World.
In brief, the world of The Great Gatsby can seem as sordid, loveless, commercial, and dead as the ash heaps presided over by the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. Indeed, this atmosphere is so essential that one of the alternate titles Fitzgerald considered was Among the Ash-Heaps and Millionaires. Fitzgerald using the valley of ashes, illustrates an environment where love has lost its place, which destroys hope for a family; the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg, clearly intended to represent those of God, emphasizes that this lack of love and filial piety in a sin against themselves as well as society and God.
Symbols are always a big part in all the novels. The symbols also perform a big role throughout the novel. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby loved Daisy and always looking to her house. Tom has an affair with a women who lived in the Valley of Ashes. In this novel, valley of ashes and the green light goes through the novel, suggesting that the decay of American dream.