Color In The Great Gatsby

Colors define how we see the world, and they can reflect our emotions, or mental state. This is reflected in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, where colors are an extremely important, and also common, symbol. Throughout the text, important colors such as green, white, and blue are exemplified, with each having their own specific meanings. Green, the first of the colors, is closely associated with the green light at the end of Daisy’s harbor, and also symbolizes Gatsby’s close love of Daisy and the American Dream. White stands for purity, and innocence, and is generally wrote about Daisy as well. Fitzgerald also makes use of white to talk about the “Old money” and established wealth as well. Blue stands for illusions or things that are

Gatsby, a character who is surrounded by lies and deception, very often is described with having blue items or possessions around him. “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went” (Fitzgerald 42). The leaves and smoke are also described as blue. “He had come a long way to this blue lawn” (Fitzgerald 171). Gatsby’s house, his lawn, and many things around him are blue, they’re illusions of things that are not meant to be. They were items that are only there due to his illegal money making ways as a bootlegger. Gatsby constantly lies and does not allow people to figure out the real him, and thus his possessions, which he bought with the ‘blood money’ are blue. Blue is used when Fitzgerald introduces the eyes of doctor T.J. Eckleburg on a billboard in the Valley of Ashes on page 27. “The eyes of doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic” (Fitzgerald 27). The billboard symbolizes God and how the billboard looks over the Valley of Ashes, where the rich are forced to drive along the road and see the destitute conditions in which the poor must live. The billboard looks down on American society, judging it as a moral wasteland, one that consistently fails the majority of the population. Overall, the color blue has the most interpretations of any of them in the book, and it has some very important consequences in the