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Color Symbolism In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

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In the tragedy “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald uses color symbolism to intensify the setting and characterization. The colors in the novel describe the characters and their reasoning behind the stuff they do. Specifically, Fitzgerald uses white, which symbolizes purity, innocence, corruption, and lacking the spirit to characterize people of the East Egg. East Egg is located on Long Island, and it is where people that were born wealthy live. Fitzgerald uses the color white to details the basic descriptions of each and their wealth true wealth into society. The color white is primarily representing Daisy, in which describes her path to remain innocent in the novel.
The first representation of how we see the color white used in the novel is how Daisy is dressed. “She was dressed in white and had a little white roadster” (79). Daisy has all the wealth and money she can want so all she wants is someone to love. Daisy shows this by being involved with Gatsby when he did not even have that much money to support even himself. The author is describing from Daisy’s clothes describes that Daisy uses to be pure and now it symbolizes that she is corrupted. When the relationship did not go well with Gatsby, Daisy then married Tom Buchanan. She married Tom to have a because of his wealth to have a better wealth. Daisy …show more content…

Gatsby gets out of any offenses by pulling out a white card to the officer. “Taking a white card out of his wallet he waved it before the man’s eyes” (72). The effect of Gatsby taking out his white card was that Gatsby did not get a ticket. The officer gave him a warning and promised to remember him. Gatsby had shown the officer a Christmas card that had received from the commissioner. The white card indicates that Gatsby displays himself as being above the law. The white Christmas card portrays Gatsby making it unethical to the rest of the

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In the novel “The Great Gatsby”, F. Scott Fitzgerald, uses the imagery of color throughout the book. Social classes, emotional states,and racial slurs, all reflect back on the many different colors that are used throughout the book. The colors are used repeatedly as symbols, and shades to develop the mood and tone In different scenes of the novel. The color white is a symbol of being clean and fresh, on the contrary it could also be very tainted like the color black. Green is the ruling color in the book which represent confidence and hope.

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Color is an essential part of everyday life and the world around us. Colors convey meaning when words cannot. In The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald uses color as a literary device to progress the story, create setting, mood, and develop and develop characters. Fitzgerald’s use of color shows the differences in class by describing the character, their surroundings, and their possessions with color.

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Kevin Jimenez Ms.Marder English 3cp 8 April 2016 The Great Gatsby:True Colors Life is all about feelings and emotions and what better way to describe them using colors. Colors are often used to describe symbolism they describe the mood of the setting and they can also differentiate the rich from the poor,colors are used in different aspects to describe someone or something. In F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, characters such as Gatsby Nick and Daisy use colors to describe their emotion of the setting, and feelings towards each other. Colors portray each character 's emotions, setting changes, and foreshadowing future events.

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With the array of different motifs Fitzgerald is conveying the message that appearances are deceiving. Fitzgerald utilizes the motif of white ironically to illustrate how impure the characters are. Daisy walks in “dressed in white” in her den (Fitzgerald 74). By revealing daisy wearing white, Fitzgerald is using the common interpretation of white

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The color white means freshness and innocence but in the article Symbolic Meanings of Colors in The Great Gatsby, it says something different. It states that the color, “white actually symbolizes empty, vacuity, superficiality, ruthlessness and selfish to a great extent in the novel” (Zhang 1). Daisy is a sweet and innocent on the outside but deep down she has a cold and selfish heart that does not care for love, only the money. She reveals her selfishness when Gatsby dies and she does not show any sadness and leaves to go and travel with her

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The white makes Gatsby seem very clear. He is not trying to hide anything. He wants Daisy to see him and fall in love with his true self. Usually Gatsby is trying to hide something but he does not want to hide anything from Daisy. Gatsby believes that if he shows Daisy his true self she will fall in love with him

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There are many instances in the novel where white is used to describe Daisy. Daisy was wearing white when Nick first came to her house and the Buchanan house is described as white too; “the windows were ajar and gleaming white. ”High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl” is about Daisy as well. This also describes Daisy’s “palace” as being white and again shows Daisy being the golden girl in the Great Gatsby. Before Daisy was married she had a white car.

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The symbolism of the color white appear several times in the book. But, there was one scene that stood out. The author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about the color of white in the scene where Nick is visiting Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Fitzgerald described what happens when Nick was going on a trip with Gatsby in his car, “-only half, for as we twisted among the pillars of the elevated I heard the familiar “jug-jug-spat!” of a motor cycle, and a frantic policeman rode alongside. “All right, old sport,” called Gatsby.

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He also uses this symbolism of the color white to indicate high-class people. Fitzgerald reveals how Daisy and Jordan “were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house”(8). When these characters were introduced to Nick Carraway, the narrator, they wore white dresses which symbolize virginal purity to Nick. These women come off as airy and innocent during their initial interaction with Nick, but later on, we find out that this is not the case. Jordan and Daisy’s white dresses also affirm their place as wealthy ladies in a high social class.

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