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Color Symbolism In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The Eyes of T.J. Eckleburg When writing The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald put a lot of specific details into consideration, one of them being color symbolism. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald never mentions a color without a reason or a purpose. All of the colors help the story to grow and evolve, but the colors blue and yellow specifically help to further sub-plot lines in the novel. The eyes of T.J. Eckleburg, which are blue, and his spectacles, which are yellow, can potentially embody many different things and scenarios in the novel such as the eyes of God, or the view down upon the Valley of Ashes from the perspective of the elite class. Fitzgerald surrounds materialism and a certain form of wealth with the color yellow. People that are surrounded by the color yellow are usually perceived as materialistic or they are pursuing wealth and money in an unethical way, usually illegally. Yellow …show more content…

Blue seems to be the symbol for aristocracy in the novel. Fitzgerald focuses a lot of the color blue on Gatsby, yet the reader knows that Gatsby embodies the color yellow more. Potentially, blue could symbolize Gatsby’s long-winded dreams and visions of unreality. Since the eyes of T.J Eckleburg are blue, that could possibly connect with the idea that his eyes are the eyes of God, which makes the eyes of God out to be an illustrious dream of something far away and unreachable. “But 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. The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic- their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose...But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground (Fitzgerald

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