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The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Celia Willner 10 December 2015 American Lit 11 Bartlett White Lies Out of the Blue Colors can invoke feelings for people. Certain colors are attached to moods. Red can represent anger, green sometimes represents envy and blue can represent calm or even melancholy. Much art, music, and literature is dependent on color to convey the intended mood of the artist. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby, a man with wealth, power, and possessions is on a quest for the dream that he will never attain. He cannot have all that he already has plus the true love of Daisy. Fitzgerald creates his own unique motifs surrounding certain colors and uses these colors to emphasize the futility in Gatsby’s quest for this dream. Through the use …show more content…

Therefore the green light gives him hope that someday he will be reunited with his love. In most societies today, green means go; Gatsby sees the light as a sign to go ahead and attain his dream. Consequently, Gatsby tries to pursue his love and thinks that he has convinced Daisy to leave her husband, but it is all an illusion; “‘If it wasn’t for the mist we could see you home across the bay...you always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.’...it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one” (93). In this moment, Gatsby realizes that his dream will never be obtained because the light is not visible anymore. There is a distance between Gatsby and Daisy, and the only connection to his vision of a perfect life is the green light, and, once it disappears, the hope for an ideal life fades. By saying “It had seemed as close as a star to the moon,” it is almost as if Gatsby is very close, but in reality he is still far away and the hope has vanished with the green light. After Gatsby dies, Nick reflects on Gatsby’s decisions that were based on the green light; “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future

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