What Does The Valley Of Ashes Represent In The Great Gatsby

The author uses very descriptive imagery to illustrate, in our minds, how the Valley of Ashes looks like. He also uses personification, "a line of gray cars crawls..", including a simile, "where ashes grow like wheat." Nick tells us about a stretch of land lying a quarter of a mile between West Egg and New York which are connected by a motor road and a railroad, called the Valley of Ashes. The valley of ashes is basically the midpoint, being a colorless, desolate area of land. In fact, the somber place is home to the people who the higher class of the city tend to overlook. The novel's non-wealthy people live in the valley of ashes, which men work here by shoveling the ashes. This subdued landscape is filled with missed opportunities contrary

There are many different problems and situations that affected many Americans during the time period of The Great Gatsby. The different problems affect many characters lives and relationships throughout the novel in a variety of situations. Such problems with characters personal lives would be the withering of a American dream. Also, such situations during this time period is how characters aren’t achieving their highest potential and achieving their dreams. Another problem during this time period would be the very unequal wealth distribution in America, but also among all the characters families and themselves individually in The Great Gatsby. There is new money, old money, and the poor which is represented by the valley of ashes throughout this time period. Also, among the rich and poor there is always those who want more and more and are always greedy at every point in the story. Even though characters want all the money they can get there hands on they also try there hardest to achieve enough love and romance in there lives that their heart desires. Lastly, there is a great deal of betrayal throughout the entire length of the novel The Great Gatsby. It is represented by many characters, their relationships, and their personal lives. Different characters’ personal relationships and personal lives give well-distinguished representations of the problems such as a withering American dream, unequal wealth distribution in America, and betrayal in The Great Gatsby.

As the phenomenal politician Bernie Sanders once said, “For many, the American dream has become a nightmare.” In the novel The Great Gatsby, written by Scott Fitzgerald, the “American Dream” plays a crucial role in the plot. Gatsby devotes his life to accomplish his American Dream which consists of wealth and Daisy’s love. But is the American Dream actually what it seems to be? Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald utilizes the symbolic value of the Valley of Ashes, East Egg, and the significance of the color yellow to constantly establish that opulence and the American Dream is deceiving as it leads to moral and societal corruption.

The author uses the Valley of Ashes, a small town between the West Egg and New York City, to symbolize the moral and social decay that stems from the desire to become wealthy. The Valley of Ashes, "a fantastic farm where ashes grow 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 powdery air symbolizes a morally stripped place where materialistic and false people can live in harmony. The unfortunate events that occur in the Valley of Ashes, including Gatsby's death, the affair between Tom and Myrtle and Myrtle's accidental death, represent the severe consequences stemming from the failed attempts at achieving the American Dream. As the characters travel through the Valley of Ashes to reach elsewhere, they are forced to belittle themselves to a lower social status, as seen when Tom engages in an affair with Myrtle, a poor-stricken woman, who solely provides another form of comfort. Serving as a symbol of social and moral destruction, the Valley of Ashes also symbolizes the condition in which the poorer American society lived during the 1920s. The description of the Valley of Ashes used through color symbolism, creates a melancholy atmosphere which allows the reader to connect the importance of the "desolate strip of land" to the negative personality changes, reflective of the 1920s, within the characters.

Imagine a world where one side of the equator was filled with wealth, happiness, and content. Now imagine the other side of the equator filled with poverty, sadness, and death. These two completely opposing halves enhance each other's descriptions and make one think of each side more deeply about the concept. This same scenario is also present in one of America’s favorite novels based upon the 1920s and the American dream. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald juxtaposes two contrasting places, the Valley of Ashes and New York City, using imagery to magnify the difference between reality and a fantasy, which is central to the meaning of the work.

Gatsby's lavish existence in the nouveau riche Long Island community of West Egg, moreover, cannot ever compensate for his lack of the more pedigreed wealth of East Egg. He remains an "innocent" in his single-minded pursuit of Daisy despite his association with underworld characters and ill-begotten money. The Valley of Ashes and the sign with the blank eyes of Dr. Eckleburg indicate a moral wasteland and an absent God--as well as the emptiness of the new commercial culture. Gatsby's pursuit of his dream takes on a mythic quality, mirroring the dream which led Americans to conquer the frontier. Gatsby's "frontier," however, is an ill-advised pursuit of a vacuous young woman not worthy of his love,” (Pavlovski

The Valley of Ashes setting in The Great Gatsby represents the theme of the extreme difference in social classes in New York during the early 1900’s. The ideology that the Great Gatsby is only filled with liveliness and wealth is wrong. There is whole other side of the wealth spectrum that nobody cares about. The difference in materialistic items from the two places was incredible but it was in the “... a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy,...”(Fitzgerald 5). that was the main factor. The level of houses in West Egg was beyond extravagant; they were magnificent. This compared to the buildings in the Valley of Ashes, was like missing a free throw twenty yards wide. The quality of the Valley of Ashes was like having “... a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of a wasteland,...”(Fitzgerald 24). The quality difference is too intense to be true, yet it is. The money of wealth of one person, except Nick, can buy all the homes in Valley of Ashes. Just by the type of homes there are, it is like it is a whole other world.

The Valley of Ashes is a desolate, decaying place that is looked upon by T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes. In the book, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald describes the eyes overlooking the valley as a “brood over solemn dumping ground”(24). The book suggests that the eyes represent an omnipresent figure looking over the superficial wasteland. The American Dream is to become wealthy and prosperous. In the Valley of Ashes, the only thing that goes on is the pursuit of money and materialism; however, the valley has become run down and empty. The book often

Many times we hear of society's affect on people; society influencing the way people think and act.  Hardly mentioned is the reverse: peoples' actions and lifestyles affecting society as a whole and how it is characterized.  Thus, society is a reflection of its inhabitants and in The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, it is a wasteland described as the "valley of ashes."  Since the characters of this novel make up this wasteland, aren't they the waste?  Symbolically, this waste represents the lack of ethics of the 1920's society and civilization's decay.  In The Great Gatsby, morals deficiencies such as a lack of God, selfishness, and idleness are reflective of a society as doomed as

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a novel that has a large focus on the ideas of the American Dream and social class in the 1920s. In the novel, the people of West Egg and East Egg are people of the upper who have earned money either through inheritance or working hard and have had many opportunities to make their American Dream a reality. The people of the Valley of Ashes are people of lower class who have little to no money and have to work all their lives to make ends meet. Even though both social classes strive for the same thing, The American Dream, neither of them will ever truly achieve it. Fitzgerald uses a vast contrast in the settings of East Egg, West Egg, and

Geography Matters All throughout the world the geography in which a person lives can say deeply impact how a person behaves and it can say many things about the surrounding community. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald uses the geography of the Valley of Ashes to show how the valley and the people there are the bottom of the barrel for those who strove for the American Dream, despite how hard they worked for a better life. The idea of the American Dream has always been apart of American society since it was rooted in the Declaration of Independence. Over time the ideas behind the dream have changed through the course of history. In today’s society the American Dream has become known as the ability to achieve happiness and wealth through hard work.

The Great Gatsby is a novel that illustrates the society in the 1920's and the associated beliefs, values and dreams of the American population at that time. These beliefs, values and dreams can be summed up be what is termed the "American Dream", a dream of money, wealth, prosperity and the happiness that supposedly came with the booming economy and get-rich-quick schemes that formed the essential underworld of American upper-class society. This underworld infiltrated the upper echelons and created such a moral decay within general society that paved the way for the ruining of dreams and dashing of hopes as they were placed confidently in the chance for opportunities that could be seized by one and all. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates the

    Throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, location is a critical motif. The contrasts between East and West, East Egg and West Egg, and the two Eggs and New York serve important thematic roles and provide the backdrops for the main conflict. Yet, there needs to be a middle ground between each of these sites, a buffer zone, as it were; there is the great distance that separates East from West; there is the bay that separates East Egg from West Egg; and, there is the Valley of Ashes that separates Long Island from New York. The last of these is probably the most striking. Yet, the traditional literal interpretation does not serve Fitzgerald's theme as well as a more

Throughout the novel, the ash heaps and valley of ashes are one of the most referenced symbols found within the Great Gatsby. These symbols in turn are also able to provide different shades of meaning to the reader depending on how the reader interprets the ash heaps and valley of ashes. One shade of meaning that can be offered to the readers is that the ash heaps represent success of the factories during the time of the 1920s. During this period of time, modern mass production as well as consumption began to grow as economic prosperity

In the great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, the author shows many times that the most important thing is the American dream that he shows through his novel, The Great Gatsby. In the novel, Fitzgerald illustrates that the 'American Dream' is not only declining, but is an illusion and does not exist in reality. His work suggests that no matter how much ambition, determination or work ethic one possesses, people not born into wealth will not succeed in the struggle to overcome society and its harshness, and will not be able to surpass society’s imposed glass ceiling limitations. This is shown by Gatsby, the valley of ashes and the green light that symbolises Gatsby's hope and dream for a life with Daisy.