Theme Of Religion In The Great Gatsby

According to Thomas C. Foster, every meal is a communion, which results in either a positive and fortified relationship or a foreshadowing of negative consequences. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby” is filled with several communions; one of which is the main turning point of the novel. The luncheon attendees at Tom and Daisy’s house for this specific communion include: Tom, Daisy, Gatsby, Nick, and Jordan. The meal starts off extremely awkward, with an obvious sense of tension in the room. In this scene, Tom is realizing the relationship and feelings present between his wife, Daisy, and Gatsby. Gatsby in this scene is also trying to get Daisy to admit to Tom that she never loved Tom, which ends up being something she simply can not do

A Christ figure is depicted as a visionary character who is symbolic to Jesus Christ and suggests towards the beginning of the novel, the reader learns more about Gatsby’s early life and can see how he to Biblical stories. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the intriguing and mysterious character Jay Gatsby is undoubtedly represented as a Christ figure. Fitzgerald uses strikingly similar characteristics between Gatsby and Jesus, resulting images to the Bible and Gatsby’s ultimate death echoing that of Jesus’ crucifixion to relate Gatsby to Christ.

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.

While reading The Great Gatsby, we see a symbol of God in the eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg and the character of Owl Eyes. Dr. Eckleburg represents an all-seeing, uninvolved God who sees the immoral actions, but does not interfere. In a conversation with Michaelis, Wilson says, “‘I told her she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the winds’ - with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it - ‘and I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!’’ Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night” (Fitzgerald 167). Wilson believes that the one person who has the right to judge is God and He is watching.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald tells the story of a world lost to superficiality and greed. Falsehood and deception are the currency which fuels the characters in the novel. Dwelling in this fallen world, Fitzgerald has placed a fallen god. Gatsby is bathed in descriptions that identify him as the Son of God. Fitzgerald makes a conscious effort to clothe this character with imagery and actions to make him the patron deity of this fallen world, but Gatsby is too much enveloped by his surroundings to save them and is consumed in the attempt. Despite the biblical allusions, strong images and explicit statements identifying Gatsby with Christ, the prevailing tone of the novel prevents him from being a Christ-figure.

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.

Another symbol used in The Great Gatsby is the Valley of Ashes. The Valley of Ashes is located between West Egg and New York City, and all it is, is land with the dumping of industrial ashes all over it. It represents the moral and social decay that results from wealth, as the rich enjoy nothing but their own pleasure. It also symbolizes the poor who live among the dirty ashes and lose their strength as a result. “This is a valley of ashes-a fantastic farm where ashes grown like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powder air.”(27) Looking over the valley of ashes are the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. “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.”(27) The Eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg could represent God staring down on the American society. They’re just a pair of fading eyes painted on an old billboard over the valley of ashes. Fitzgerald uses the eyes to suggest symbols only mean something because of the characters put meaning in them. George Wilson makes the connection of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes symbolizing God. They could also represent the meaninglessness of the

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.

Long held societal beliefs during the 1920s such as; The American dream, Minorities place in society, and Fashion. In The Great Gatsby and during the 1920s, many thoughts and actions were affected by long held societal beliefs. Some of the most common societal beliefs during the 1920s, in The Great Gatsby, were; The American Dream, Minorities standpoint, and Fashion.

The billboard of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg is Above the valley of ashes and near George Wilson's garage and filling station. As a result of the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg looking down over the valley of ashes they are able to see all that happens below them. This in turn leads George Wilson to believe they represent the eyes of God. By associating Eckleburg’s eyes with the eyes of God he relates them with the power to judge what happens below. As George looks at the Billboard he tells Michaelis how he told Myrtle that, “You may fool me but you can’t fool God!” (Fitzgerald 170). This means Myrtle could hide her affair from him, but she couldn’t hide her affair from the

It is clear in Fitzgerald’s description that the eyes of T. J. Eckleburg are displeased upon looking at the remains of the dumping ground. This displeasement could be representative of God’s own displeasement when looking down at the deceit of people such as Tom, who literally cheats on his wife under the eyes of T. J. Eckleburg. Later on when heading towards New York with Tom and Jordan, Nick describes T. J. Eckleburg as keeping vigil, “ ...locality...was vaguely disquieting...over the ashheaps the giant eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg kept their vigil…” (131). It appears as if T. J. Eckleburg is warning Nick of what is to come in the not so distant future. He keeps watch over them in a knowingly way awaiting the weight of their actions to fall upon them.

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,

Fitzgerald, in his sarcastic novel The Great Gatsby, frequently shows how racism and classism seriously influence the possibilities of achieving American dreams in obscure methods. The novel details Gatsby’s achievements and dream including Daisy, and makes comparison with other people in different races and classes indirectly but visibly. The fact that, though Gatsby is much wealthier than those in East Egg, he has never achieved the American dream, never owned Daisy truly and never acquired respect, but rumours, due he isn’t born in high class and makes money through bootleg. To some extent, the miserable end of Gatsby is the reflection of the disparity of classism. Gatsby’s mansion reminds people of the feasibility of making the American dream come true. However, his unexpected death that is not caught by police, but killed by Wilson, a white man in mid class, proves that it is related to races and classes closely. Fitzgerald takes us into the suffering of Gatsby to show us that the American dream is like a shell company, which makes everyone look forward to their future with great expectations, but only certain people can truly reach it because people are not standing on the same starting line.

Greek mythology was some of the first stories in the world and they have been carved into society, and often is unseen. The stories were not only made to answer unknown questions but to make a social class by making higher powered figures such as gods, goddesses, and Titans. Many authors go back to these myths and draw inspiration from them. When doing this, they incorporate allusions of it in their writing which gives further background of the characters and adds foreshadowing. This is present in Fitzgerald's writing, and, in this case, his book The Great Gatsby. Greek mythology is present in The Great Gatsby through Gatsby’s actions and belongings, Daisy Buchanan, and Nick Carraway. All of this reveals the Greek allusions that Fitzgerald entwined in the story.