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What Does The Colour Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

Decent Essays

Analyse the symbolism of colour in The Great Gatsby.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “the Great Gatsby” he uses many literary devices. One of the most obvious is colour, and in this essay
I will explore how Fitzgerald uses colours like white, green and yellow to help convey 1920’s America and Gatsby’s struggle for Daisy
Buchanan.

White features most strongly in the novel and becomes a way for people to hide behind false facades. In “The Great Gatsby” white symbolises royalty innocence and purity and can also be seen to represent the way the wealthy falsely themselves. On the surface, the white symbolises their innocence and purity, like when Nick first meets Jordan and
Daisy in “flowing white dresses.” Daisy’s name is also …show more content…

Of all the characters,
Gatsby himself fits best into this category; Gatsby lives in a green house surrounded by a green lawn.

This colour light becomes his hopes in the novel. Barely visible from his west egg dock is the green light that marks out Daisy’s on East
Egg. He reaches towards this in the darkness as the guiding light to his dream. Daisy also forms a key part of Gatsby’s American Dream so the colour green is also associated with this idealism. This reaching for the light also shows how Gatsby wishes to repeat the past. In chapter nine Nick describes the Green light to how America must have looked to early settlers.

Yellow symbolises a desire for wealth and it also represents the old money of East Egg. Much like Daisy Buchanan the old money are false and misguided. Gatsby though is also bad beneath his character, showing that this also applies to the noveau riche people, as they to are yellow inside. His gained his fortune through the drugs trade and crime, meaning there is nothing innocent about his fortune. This goes against the American Dream, as according to this money should be a reward for honesty and success.

The valley of ashes is associated with a grey and gloomy colour. This thin strip of land between west Egg and New York City is a long strip of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes, representing the moral and social decay that results from uninhibited pursuits of

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