Color Symbolism In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Throughout the world color is often used in a variety of ways to represent different ideas and traits. People use color to express how they feel, what they are like, and how they view their surroundings. Many people use color to represent feelings such as red for love and yellow for happiness. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the narrator, Nick Carraway, befriends his wealthy neighbor, Jay Gatsby who is stuck in the past. Throughout the book, Gatsby tries to meet up with his past lover, Daisy Buchanan, who is married at the time to Tom Buchanan. Gatsby goes to extreme limits to try to gain Daisy back, but in the end, he was never able to bring back the past. In The Great Gatsby, color symbolism plays an essential role.

This color is mentioned many times as it, “symbolizes money, materialism and high social position”. A major way this is shown in the book is when the two Eggs are described in the book because, “gold is used in the book to symbolize old wealth and new riches” (Olesen). East Egg is said to be the home of the families who have had money for a while or have inherited it from relatives while West Egg is where families of recently acquired money live. With these two different places already put in place at the beginning of the book, money and social position is very important and the color gold represents it well. In relation to the wealth of West Egg and East Egg, “Gatsby is hopeful that he can win over Daisy with [his] power of money” (Olesen). As he gained wealth over the years he was away from Daisy, Gatsby believes he will be able to get Daisy to go back to him due to the money and the social position he reached due to his wealth. Another way yellow symbolizes social position in The Great Gatsby is the billboard in the Valley of Ashes as, “Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s enormous spectacles are yellow too” (Haibing). Doctor T.J. Eckleburg is said to be the one to look down over The Valley of Ashes giving him a high ranking in social position which is very well symbolized by the yellow of the glasses he wears. The Valley of Ashes is a very dark, gloomy, and gray waste land with little color in it. The thing that stands out in the valley is, “the only building in sight, which was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land” (Fitzgerald 24). The yellow brick building at the Valley of Ashes is described as yellow because, compared to the surrounding buildings, it was the one in the best condition and it was doing a lot better in business than the ones that were nearby. With yellow symbolizing the wealth of this building, it goes to show how important