God In The Great Gatsby

Eckleburg, are first seen in Chapter 2, overlook all the journeys made by the characters. In specific, George Wilson identifies as God. There is an inherent irony within this symbolism. Wilson quotes from the New Testament to the Galantis that God sees everything. In specific Galatians 6:7 “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” Yet the spectacles characterize someone who cannot. That everything is relative, to which spectacles you choose to wear. The valley of ashes were the billboard is placed can be seen as a metaphorical location, conveying emptiness of societal spirituality. Human life has limited value throughout the novel. Myrtle’s death causes very little compassion, except from Nick. With that sense, the book echoes the opening chapter of Ecclesiastes, an Old Testament philosophical treatise) on the conditions of humankind. “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. What is crooked cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted. … Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.” Ecclesiastes 1:14-15, Ecclesiastes

The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, symbolic of a higher power, loom over the Valley of Ashes, ever-present and watchful, passing judgment on not only the immorality of individual characters, but also on the East as a whole. When Nick first notices the painted eyes, he comments, “above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T.J.

The eyes of T.J. Eckleburg can be seen as if someone is looking over you which is described as, “above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg” (Fitzgerald 23). You can see his eyes in the sky and above land. His eyes are gigantic and he does not have a nose. The eyes do not look out of a face, but out of glasses. T.J. Eckleburg's eyes can be symbolic to God. They are always looking over you like God is. His eyes see everything, as you are constantly being watched. When you look out you can see Eckleburg's eyes just like how you know God is the man above you. Eckleburg's eyes are symbolic to God watching over you.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the God is one who does not interfere with what people are doing on Earth. He does care about them, even if they have done wrong, doesn’t try to change them, or their morals. He is described as a “watcher” (Fitzgerald 167). He watches people cause their own destruction but does not do anything about it. The role of God and Religion in Gatsby is evident in the lack of religion among the upper/business class, it’s effect on mortality, and the symbolism of God.

One night in 1921, a friend of Fitzgerald's heard him mutter a strange comment. "God damn the Catholic Church; God damn the Church; God damn God!" he said (Allen, 92). It was three years before he would write The Great Gatsby. In the years preceding this incident, he would often visit with a priest by the name of John Barron to talk about "Fitzgerald's writing as well as other literary and religious matters" (Allen, 91). Barron noticed his "spiritual instability," and "his natural response to Fitzgerald's iconoclasms was a quiet "Scott, quit being a damn fool'" (Allen, 92). Fitzgerald

Throughout Fitzgerald’s entire novel, The Great Gatsby, Doctor T.J. Eckleburg is a religious symbol for God in order to show how ideals of faith have been manipulated to those of the value of wealth and immorality within Modern America. Fitzgerald references this multiple times throughout this novel, but he most clearly built upon how this religious symbol represents wealth when he wrote “I told her she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the window… and I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing’… Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg” (159). In this, George Wilson is recounting what he had once said to his wife, who committed adultery with another man. This is significant because for George Wilson, that sign is the most realistic and apparent form of God, and the fact that it is an advertisement shows how Modern America has strayed from it’s traditional values and has become corrupt because everything has become concentrated on wealth, including faith, which is a sacred tradition that America was built on. By depicting God as an advertisement, Fitzgerald displays to the reader that God and faith in general, a conventional American belief, have been replaced by wealth in the form of a commercial made by an ophthalmologist to create profit. This is explained in the second chapter, where Nick describes the advertisement as “some wild wag of an oculist set there to fatten his practice

Eckleburg are really a billboard for an optician in Queens, however, if you start at the beginning, they mean so much more than that. We see that the setting of the novel is described as a very dismal place, lacking hope, dark and brooding, when Fitzgerald calls it 'gray land'; that 'drifts endlessly.'; Then, all of a sudden, the bright eyes of Dr. Eckleburg appear on the horizon. The blueness and the size of the eyes give the reader a sense of the sky, and heavens with God in them. The lack of a full face also gives you idea of Godliness because in society we are never really given a good description of what God looks like. Also, the color yellow in the glasses of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg gives the idea of sun, which brings us back to the idea of the sky. Only this time, we get a sense of hopefulness from the eyes to combat the sense of despair from the land surrounding them. The eyes being described as dimming over time gives the illusion of loss of hope due to the bleakness of the area. The idea of the eyes being out under the sun and rain gives lends a thought to the fact that God is watching these characters, in good times and in bad, and no matter how terrible the setting gets.

Through Fitzgerald’s characterisation of the protagonists, the moral chaos within the society becomes evident, with a society of immense greed and wealth being born, revealing the dreaded materialistic trait within individuals in the society leading to drastic consequences. Similarly to the prodigious increase in wealth during the “roaring 20’s”, the luxurious society of New York revolves heavily around money, with “the rich getting richer and the poor getting children”. The materialistic trait is evident within the protagonist Daisy Buchanan - ‘a careless person”. We learn of Daisy’s materialistic behaviour through her decision to marry Tom Buchanan over Jay Gatsby “because she was

It’s discovered that Tom is having an affair with Myrtle and she is then killed by Daisy, we see George Wilson fashion one of the most prominent illusions in the novel in which he turns the illusion of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg into an actuality. George and Myrtle Wilson live in the valley of ash. George finds an old billboard that advertises the previously mentioned optometrist. The billboard has gargantuan eyes that are used to represent an omnipotent being, in making this observation; we can see that George is personifying the billboard. After George discovers of Myrtle’s death he seeks guidance from the God like illusion of Eckleburg “God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing,” George believes that Gatsby has been having an affair with Myrtle and also that Gatsby was the one that killed her with his yellow car. George then responds religiously and asks the God like Eckleburg to enact revenge on Gatsby

Among the ash heaps, the dark bridge, and the eyes of Dr. Eckleburg, there is no greater sense of religion. In this purgatory of New York, however, where sins bite and consciences nag, "the giant eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg [keep] their vigil" (131). He watches, as God does, as the worlds of George Wilson and Myrtle, Gatsby, Daisy and Tom collide and dissolve, leaving the tangled mess that had arisen shattered and dead among the debris of his universe.

Daisy, Tom’s wife and the object of Gatsby’s romantic quest, for example, possesses a voice “full of money,” (144) which blatantly associates her character with wealth. Fitzgerald makes Daisy seem desirable, but never describes her physical features, which is odd considering she is the force behind the profound obsession of Jay Gatsby. Perhaps Fitzgerald chooses to ignore Daisy’s physical description to purposefully display her as a bare character. In essence, he dehumanizes her to better reveal her shallowness. One of the few times a physical description of Daisy appears comes in conjunction with Miss Baker, another character under the spell of wealth, when Nick comments on their white dresses with “their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire” (17). With

Another major symbol in this novel is the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. These are a pair of spectacles painted on an old billboard in the Valley of Ashes. The significant aspect is that this symbol only has meaning when other characters instill it with meaning. The eyes represent a higher power looking over the

Another symbol of Gatsby’s valiance is the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg that embody the atrocious society that Gatsby is trying to accustom himself with. Eckleburg’s eyes are a part of an advertising billboard in the infamous Valley of Ashes. The material-driven world in which the novel takes place is represented by Eckleburg’s eyes, which ruin Gatsby’s relationship with Daisy. During a lunch at the Buchanan’s home, Daisy innocently tells Gatsby that he “resemble[s] the advertisement of the man” (125), which demonstrates that Daisy does not like Gatsby for himself, but for the superficial illusion he represents. In addition, Gatsby’s youthful dream of spending the rest of his life with Daisy is shown through the advertisement of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. A main aspect of advertising is to showcase eternal youth, wealth, and beauty. This idea goes along with Gatsby's youthful dream of Daisy and how his aspirations will never die. Furthermore, the eyes also symbolize the eyes of God looking down upon humanity. However, the eyes have “dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain” (28). While the eyes can still be thought of as the eyes of God, the fact that they are fading away means that God is ashamed by the lack of morality and the abundance of the evils of money and status. While

To begin with, Fitzgerald uses blue to support the idea of foreshadowing, which is found twice in the valley of ashes. These blue symbols are George Wilson's eyes and T.J. Eckleburg’s billboard. George Wilson's eyes show the opportunity and desperation of the people living in the valley of ashes. It can be foreshadowed that George Wilson will do something desperate later in the novel, because of his desperation to leave the valley of ashes and improve his and Myrtle's life. Next we have the billboard, where “the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic… They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles” (Pg. 16). The blue eyes of T.J. Eckleburg, symbolize the opportunity of the characters, but the yellow also is important in knowing what will be foreshadowed. The yellow spectacles represent the obsession and sickness that characters such

As a result of his actions, the way he lived, and the way he died, the titular character from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby, can be seen as a symbol with many meanings. One possible meaning: you can gain wealth, but you do not have to change yourself. Two: a desire cannot be made obtainable unless you act on it. Three: the people you surround yourself with will not always be there for you in the end. All of these possible meanings double as themes F. Scott Fitzgerald may have wanted to get across as he was writing The Great Gatsby.