Scott Fitzgerald's Use Of Symbolism In The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald uses imagery and symbolism to represent bigger ideas in his stories. For his novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald was able to do something most authors aren’t. He was able to approve of the cover of his book. The cover selected was a painting of a nightly city, being watched over by celestial eyes. The eyes stand out in juxtaposition of the rest of the dark blue sky due to their sickly yellow color as a teal tear travels down from the left. However, a closer look at the eyes in the cover show that they irises are blue, and inside the eyes are two women. The surreal art piece has as much symbolism in it as the pages it protects, especially the eyes in which the painting is named for. The women within the eyes on the cover

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 first symbol we see appears at the end of Chapter one. It is a

One of the first symbols Fitzgerald use is The Valley of Ashes “This is a valley of ashe’s a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take farms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally with transcendent effort of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air” (Fitzgerald 23). The Valley of Ashes is described in such great detail because it shows how beauty can be destroyed by greed. “Fitzgerald’s valley of ashes has been frequently compared to Eliot’s “Waste Land,” but the difference are more instructive than the similarities. Eliot’s waste and land is not, in terms of its imagery and mythology specifically Christian”(Elmore 433). The Valley of Ashes is a dead land that has a board over it that looks as if it is the eyes of God that sees all things.

The Great Gatsby is a symbol itself. The Great Gatsby was written to represent the rise and fall of the American Dream. The author places the rich and wealthy lifestyle on a high pedestal while he shows the dramatic consequences of moral and social decay amongst the characters. As each turning point is revealed, the American Dream slowly crumbles in the selfish hands of those who remain ignorant to anything else in the world. The significance of the many symbolic elements in The Great Gatsby plays a role in revealing the underlying themes of the American Dream, the ongoing clash between love and wealth and social and moral destruction.

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.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby focuses on the corruption of the American dream during the 1920‘s. For the duration of this time period, the American dream was no longer about hard work and reaching a set goal, it had become materialistic and immoral. Many people that had honest and incorruptible dreams, such as Jay Gatsby, used corrupted pathways to realize their fantasy. People’s carelessness was shown through their actions and speech towards others. Fitzgerald uses characterization and symbolism from different characters and items to convey the corruption of the American dream.

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 is an author who is highly recognized for his use of symbolism in his works of literature. The use of symbolism in any work of literature is very important because it is used to represent something through something else. It is also used to help create emotion and enhance the story. Fitzgerald portrays symbolism in The Great Gatsby through the green light, T.J. Eckleburg, and the colors used for description.

The Great Gatsby has been around for ages; it is a story of a young man in the 1920’s who is thrown into a new world made up of the new and the old rich. He is confused by the way these people act and in the end cannot stay another minute in this strange, insensitive, materialistic world. The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses many techniques to help the reader understand how Nick Carraway (the narrator) is feeling throughout the story. In the book The Great Gatsby, the author F. Scott Fitzgerald uses effective language to make his writing successful. He uses the techniques of imagery and irony to display this message.

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.

The Great Gatsby is full of symbolism.The green light, the Valley of Ashes, and the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are just a few examples. In Thomas C. Foster’s book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, he writes about symbols and what they mean. The Rockpile in the literature book is another story that uses symbolism.

A few symbolisms in novels are as memorable as the green light in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Shining at the end of Daisy’s dock, it is close enough to be seen, but too far away to be reached. Still, Gatsby, an eternal optimist, stares at it at night, as if it showed him that all his far-away dreams were about to come true. The green light in The Great Gatsby is symbolic of hope, a source of inspiration, and a representation of the American Dream to Gatsby and to the novel’s readers.

In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the story is told from the first person point of view through Nick Carraway, retelling the accounts of the protagonist, Jay Gatsby. Throughout this novel, Jay Gatsby strives to be with his so called "true love", Daisy, but soon finds out that she married another man, which creates conflict between many of the characters. The Great Gatsby has an abundance of symbols throughout the text, including the Valley of Ashes representing the moral and social decay of society in the 1920s, the green light which symbolizes Gatsby 's desire to have Daisy as well as the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg representing God piercing down upon and judging the American society of this era.

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,