Symbols In The Great Gatsby

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.

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.

Eckleburg. Since the billboard is placed in a poor area that has no hope of good health, the true meaning of the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg can be interpreted as the symbol for the eyes of god, the god of the spoiled American dream that encourages people to forget about everyone else and everything else and just focus on their “dream” to be super rich. The only image that represents the God are the eyes of Dr. J. L. Eckleburg that are looking at everyone from the billboard advertising glasses. These eyes serve as a symbol of hope for the wretched people of the valley of ashes who aspire to become wealthy with the progress of the “American Dream”. These previously hopeless people of the valley, instead of looking up to the sky for god’s light, would only be met with the gaze coming from this deity on the billboard. The eyes allude to being the eyes of god of the material world because they, just like the eyes of most gods of religions, are all seeing. This omnipotent aspect is evident throughout the novel and one of the events is when George Wilson recalls his last moments with Myrtle before she died, he ends his recollection saying, “Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night”. The eyes are, without any

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.

New York City represents the mystery and beauty in the world, and West Egg represents the people that have gotten rich off the economy. The Valley of Ashes is in between New York City and West Egg, so it represents the people that are caught in the middle. In other words, it represents middle-class

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.

Symbolism, a technique sprinkled through the book, is heavily used with organic material, such as flowers, gardens, settings, etc. gives characters a more natural feel and being more organic themselves. Each scene that is given a natural setting, where it isn’t forced, shows the realist and most raw form of the character.  Gatsby and Daisy are the subjects that can be examples as two people that act differently in different settings of natural surroundings. The main focus is how they act in the most natural setting possible. Daisy and Gatsby knew each other before, sharing intimate moments, the first moment “...he kisse[s] her.  At his lips’ touched she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.” (117). Fitzgerald's vocabulary use in the quote is saturated with liveliness and beauty. The words give a feeling that the book is alive. Gatsby is opening Daisy up as a person. For him she can be a real person, not fake in a world where status matters. For Gatsby, she has

In the summer while all the characters are at Tom’s house, everything was told to Tom about the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy. It was the hottest day of the summer and the heat was representing the tension between everyone. As the tension rose in the house of Tom Buchanan, as he said "I can't speak about what happened five years ago, because I didn't know Daisy then—and I'll be damned if I see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back door. But all the rest of that's a God damned lie. Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now"(Fitzgerald 130). As the summer ends, as summer is turning into fall, it is when Gatsby’s story falls apart. While Gatsby’s laying in the pool, under the falling autumn leaves, Wilson shoots Gatsby and then kills himself because of the car accident. Because the novel continually transitioning between weather and seasons the emotions are changing

They are seen as a god that watches over the Valley of Ashes and sees all that goes on there, “Wilson looks out over the Valley of Ashes, not upon the dew and stirring birds as Nick and Gatsby, but upon the dead eyes of T.J Eckleburg. Astonished, Michaelis watches as Wilson reveals that he worships Eckleburg as a god. The contrast between the blue-gray dawn of the wasteland and the gold-turning dawn of West Egg is evident this time, not just apparent. Both Nick and Wilson make commitments in that dawn - Nick to another human being, to life, and Wilson to a gaudy graven image, to death” (Seiters 87). People that do not live in the Valley of Ashes look at it differently than those living there. Nick looks upon the billboard as an overseer, but Wilson looks to the billboard as a god. The eyes of T.J. Eckleburg are no different than the rest of the Valley of Ashes in the way they look. “The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and 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 non-existent nose” (Fitzgerald 23). The color of the billboard has been dimmed by numerous paintless days under the sun as they watch over the dumping

T.J. Eckleberg represent God as they watch everyone through the billboard in the Valley of Ashes. Fitzgerald describes the eyes as “blue and gigantic” and he adds that “they look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose” (Fitzgerald 23). This is an important quote because this is when DR. T.J. Eckleberg is first introduced. It also tells us a lot about the symbolism of this character.

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 Eckleburg Eyes were the biggest symbol in my opinion. It was showing the fact that Daisy was blind to the fact that Tom was cheating on her with myrtle which is why the ash is over the eyes in this scene one option this represents the blindness of Daisy to the affair. The way the author uses this shows his illustration to forecast, other option is that the connection be between the fact that god only really exists in george wilson's eyes. The final option is that it is god looking down on people judging them.

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

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.

As an example, the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg played a significant role in both adaptations; the 2013 version, however, emphasized this symbol more heavily. Wilson states as he looks at the eyes of T.J. Eckleberg after losing his wife, “God knows what you’ve been doing...you may fool me, but you can’t fool God!... God sees everything” (Fitzgerald 159-160). It’s apparent that this sign outside of his garage truly affected him and everyone else that resides or even just passes through the Valley of Ashes. Another difference is the view of the 1920's.