Great Gatsby Symbols

Individuals perpetuate false personas to such an extent that they are convinced into a state of false consciousness of reaching the American dream, ultimately, this facade leads them to their downfall, exposing repressed reality from idealistic lies. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald utilizes symbols to describe the hollow nature of each character’s deceitful persona, which comes to show the ultimate theme of downfall through the individual’s perception of the American dream. The use of gold as a mask for the colour yellow represents authentic wealth versus fake wealth, further developed though Jay Gatsby’s pursuance of the American dream. The colour white known for is purity and simplicity is denoted by Daisy Buchanan, a character who represses the reality in which she lives, insinuated by her change in surroundings. Furthermore, the character of Myrtle Wilson, showcases her greed for wealth and her need of a rich-husband as an American dream, symbolized by the surrounding colour of grey, a representation of her veneer-rich persona.

In life everyone strives to get rich, but is having an abundance of money always good? Sometimes people use money for personal benefits, sometimes it's for the benefit of others, but at times people with money use it to create their social status. In The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the idea of wealth is seen throughout. Jay Gatsby, who lives next door to Nick Carraway; the Narrator of the story, wants to be with his dream girl Daisy. Gatsby is wealthy and throws parties to impress Daisy. Daisy however, is married to another man Tom Buchanan. Throughout the story the people with money use it to create their social status. In The Great Gatsby F.Scott Fitzgerald uses symbolism to convey, wealth causes people to assert

The book The Great Gatsby is written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, it’s a narrative told from the perspective of Nick Carraway. He tells the story of the tragic life of Jay Gatsby and talks about the society of the wealthy people with high social status. He talks about the conflict between the two huge power Tom and Gatsby, due to their similarity in their money and social status, while they compete for dominance and masculinity by fighting over Daisy. Through Nick’s narration and his close relationship with Gatsby, the readers realize that the motive behind everything that Gatsby does is to win back Daisy’s heart to repeat the past, the first time when he fell in love with Daisy.

Another symbol that Fitzgerald uses in The Great Gatsby is the bill board with T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes. “But 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. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue gigantic-their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.”(Fitzgerald 23-24). Fitzgerald uses T.J. Eckleburg's as a symbol to represent God’s

Gatsby is not misleading, and cares and hopes for the best to every one of the characters he meets. Gatsby progressed in a multitude of ways, such as how he talked and thought of certain people such as Daisy. The way F. Scott Fitzgerald described Gatsby as a character and how he progressed Gatsby couldn't be more fitting as a caring and more respectful kind of guy. How Gatsby relates to society is that he threw parties and how a lot of rich people went to his parties. He may even be able to challenge societal norms because of how he brought himself up to be a kind of character who looks like a rich guy who is just like everyone else, normal, but really he had so much inside of him that Nick Carraway(friend and Narrator) can for some reason only see. Through this journey, some may feel that Fitzgerald wanted to that there is always some sort of light around, maybe you will have to look hard for it but there will always be light, in Gatsby’s case, there was a green light, and how he looked at the light made it seem as it was his hope, but not for loss. As Gatsby says "single green light" and how it was "unattainable dream," the "dream [that] must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it”. This is one of Gatsby’s quotes that he used with a reference to the green light.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Gatsby with a great deal of symbolism and for good reason. Symbolism in writing adds more meaning and depth to a story and helps the reader think about underlying themes. It can show what is really going on under the surface of the plot. Several issues exemplified through The Great Gatsby were that wealth and power corrupt, people aren’t what they seem, you can’t go back to the past, actions have consequences, and that the idealistic American dream has been replaced by materialism and greed.

Gatsby is a symbolic figure created by Jay Gatz. An idea of who he wanted to become to please himself and fill his incompleteness. Freud said the symbolic was an “idea of the self that depends on an idea of the loss of the self because we cannot recognize selfhood unless we compare it to its absence” (Parker. 140). Jay Gatz absences come primarily from his low self-steam, insecurities, and regression.

Everything has consequences. Either positive or negative every microscopic event has an effect on the one yet to come. Jay Gatsby is a man of wealth and power, he is the man that men crave to be. A man that makes women lavish over him. How he got the this status is a different story, the gritty kind of story. His story was unnatural for the time of the roaring twenties.  He was beautiful, his house luxurious, his garden luscious, none of it was natural. More unreal then anything but never real. The palace has too many secrets, too mysterious, never real with anybody. Gatsby is living a dream. The American Dream, the unrealistic standard where everybody has the things they want, but not the thing they desire the most. So people live a constant lie that they are fine, and consequently its not real.  To be real is to be raw and to be raw is to be vulnerable to the outside world. Nature is the most vulnerable piece of life there is, when it’s not forced to be something it’s not.   The The Great Gatsby exemplifies the symbolism organic material to display the natural beauty of characters or inanimate objects which tear down the superficial walls of forced actions that Fitzgerald ultimately parades through the course of the book.

The Great Gatsby takes place in New York during the 1920’s; an era of endless parties, social standards, and individuals searching for their goals in life. The theme of, the future one sets for oneself can change drastically by making one decision, is displayed throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and shown through the characters of Gatsby and Daisy as well as through the symbol of the green light.

Arguably, the most prominent image in the cover art is the eyes. The eyes on the cover art symbolize that everything these characters do are always being watched. The eyes could be representing God and how he is looking down on the world of The Great Gatsby. For example, the city is seen below the eyes which show that it is being looked upon. Eyes are a symbol that is used throughout the book. They exist in the billboard of Doctor T.J Eckleberg, another symbol of how judgement is being passed on towards the characters. Also, within the eyes a nude woman is seen. The irises of the eyes with nude women lounging in them represent Jay Gatsby's views on his hopeful future with Daisy Buchanan. They also represent the wealthy, since this book strips away their outer shell and shows their true nature.

A symbol can be anything that represents something else in a story or something that has a deep effect on the story. Symbols can be an object, a character, an animal, a color, etc. Being a great writer, Fitzgerald has used symbols in a very effective manner. In Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby has been in love with Daisy for a quite long time. While he was at the war, she marries a rude yet a rich guy named Tom Buchanan. Desiring to win her back, Gatsby transmutes himself into a wealthy person. He conducts parties every weekend hoping to see her there. Finally, when she meets him, everything turns out badly. Fitzgerald, in this novel uses various symbols to make it more fascinating and these symbols mainly represents the life in America in the 1920’s and the American dream.

Objects can represent different things to different people, sometimes they could be as plain as an eraser; which symbolises a fix in a mistake while other times,the object chair can symbolise both comfort and peace. In the book “The Great Gatsby” the author focusses on key symbols that helps him convey his overall message:through eyes of TJ Eckleburg and how his presence influences the people living the valley of ashes,by comparing and contrasting the way an individual lives by comparing people from two different spectrums of society,and finally by using specific striking colours that convey the mood and emotions of the characters throughout the book.

Symbols and Symbolism in The Great Gatsby - Symbolism and the Truth That Lies Between

The Great Gatsby is one of the most read pieces of literature throughout the current modern Western world. High school kids all across the globe must learn and read it as part of their curriculum. One of the aspects that makes this novel so notable is that Fitzgerald, at no point in the story, needs to convey to his audience the theme of his novel directly. The main points of his novel are brought out by the powerful symbols he infuses in the book. Not only does he use them to convey his theme, but also ties them in to the rest of the story. Every aspect of this book is affected by the presence of one of his symbols. Through the use of the green light, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, and the Valley of the Ashes as symbols,

The Great Gatsby is filled with symbols and symbolism, which try to convey Fitzgerald's ideas to the reader. The symbols are uniquely involved in the plot of the story, which makes their implications more real. There are three major symbols that serve very important significance in the symbolism of the novel. They are "the valley of the ashes," the reality that represents the corruption in the world, the green light of Daisy's lap that Gatsby sees across the bay and lastly, the symbolism of the East Egg and West Egg or more important the east and the west of the country.