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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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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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In the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald he uses color in many purposeful ways. One of the ways he uses color is social class. Fitzgerald uses specific colors like cream, green, and yellow in a West egg which is new money. Cream is one of the more significant colors in the novel. The cream color is a mix of white and yellow of some sort.

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Fitzgerald uses symbolism another time to show his position as well. In the fourth chapter of the book, after Gatsby’s party that Nick was invited to, Gatsby’s car was described as vibrant with a yellow-esque color. As noted by Nick, “ It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns” (Fitzgerald 64). In The Great Gatsby, the color yellow is a symbol that represents wealth and power. Gatsby can be associated with the color yellow because it relates to his quest to gain money and get close to Daisy again.

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The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, deploys color symbolism in order to further develop characters and the plot. Fitzgerald’s use of color symbolism within The Great Gatsby not only defines the characters but adds depth to them. The most recognized color within the novel is “the single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock” (26). In addition to the green light, there are many other colors within the novel that embody characters, objects, and ideas. The most significant and memorable colors, other than green, are white and yellow, both of which are intertwined in Fitzgerald’s fictional world of materialism and scandal.

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In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, symbolism is very important all throughout it. Not only does he use objects to show symbolism, but he also uses color symbolism to prove the importance of the theme and development of the characteristics in the Great Gatsby. Color symbolism brings out the visual of the story, so readers can picture it in their mind as they are reading. Fitzgerald took the colors to an advanced level by using key colors to help further deepen the meaning of the book and its characters. Although there are many colors in the novel, Fitzgerald uses the colors green, white, and yellow to symbolize Gatsby’s emotions and riches.

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In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald exhausts numerous colors throughout the novel to demonstrate different aspects of the changing times. He associates colors like yellow, white, blue and gray with certain characters as well as specific topics in the novel. The color gray is associated with the character Jordan Baker as well as with the topics of moral and sexual ambiguity. Fitzgerald also demonstrates the use of color psychology in The Great Gatsby, thus causing the audience to acknowledge perceptions of those colors.

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The color of white symbolizes corruption as in the example of Gatsby showing the policeman a white card to not get in trouble. The color of yellow symbolizing wealth as represented with Gatsby’s luxurious car which shows how wealthy he is. And, the color green symbolizes the future as it symbolizes the future and dream because of Gatsby’s wanted dream/future he wanted with Daisy as the green light is at her house. So in conclusion, the symbolism of color in the book is a major part of the novel and there are many other colors in the novel that have symbolism like gray, silver or gold, but these colors stood out the most in The Great

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Item 2: Color Chart: In the book “The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, colors have been used to represent the character’s unapparent and underlying thoughts, feelings, status and class. Through the motif of colors, Fitzgerald depicts the feelings of the character as he refers to a specific color while describing each one of them. The colors make a deep impact on the readers as they contain a profound meaning throughout the novel. There are around five main colors in the novel appearing frequently: white, yellow, green, blue and grey, which help the novel look more gaudy and idealistic.

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In everyday life and works of literature, color can symbolizes a wide variety of emotions from moods to political views. When someone is feeling upset one often says “I’m feeling blue” or when someone is mad their face turns red giving that color the association with anger. Political status even uses color to represent each party, one is usually either a blue Democrat or red Republican. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby color plays a significant role throughout the story symbolizing emotions and social rankings. Colors such as green representing hope and money, grey portraying hopelessness, discontent, and low social class, and yellow exemplifies destruction and desire.

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Gatsby’s life is filled with various colors which signify the messages Fitzgerald is trying to convey. Color symbolism plays an important role through the novel, The Great Gatsby. In the novel, the color green detonates Gatsby’s hopes and dreams, but in other characters it represents envy, jealously, and money. When Nick returns home from his cousins house, he spotted Gatsby outside on his dock: “—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way…I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing but a green light, that might have been at the end of a dock” (Fitzgerald 21).

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In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, color symbolism is used to reveal important character traits and create a variety of moods throughout chapters 1-4. Fitzgerald incorporates the color white to demonstrate the virginal purity and initial innocence of some of the characters. He also uses this symbolism of the color white to differentiate between social classes. Fitzgerald then affiliates the colors gray and yellow with the dismal corruption that engulfs the novel. To tie everything together, he develops a pattern of the color green to portray how Gatsby’s world revolves around a greedy, yet romanticized dream, only attainable through money.

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In front of this building is also where Myrtle is killed. After Myrtle is murdered, Wilson looks at the billboard of T.J. Eckleburg, saying “God sees everything” but T.J. Eckleburg wore “a pair of enormous yellow spectacles” which gives it an ungodly and deathly presence (160; 23). Myrtle being killed by a yellow car, outside of a yellow building, while Eckleburg watches with yellow spectacles is no coincidence, it’s largely an example of death. Yellow is an artificial representation of wealth and a portrayal of corruption and death. The multiple times yellow is mentioned make the corruption of it express how terrible the events in The Great Gatsby really were.

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Fitzgerald uses color to add mod and symbolize different things throughout the novel. The novel uses many different colors to provide imagery for the readers to understand and to live as if they are truly in the novel. The color blue represents Gatsby’s illusions his deeply romantic dreams of unreality. He’ had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.”

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