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Portrayal of wealth in the great gatsby
Colours in the great gatsby
Portrayal of wealth in the great gatsby
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Portrayal of wealth in the great gatsby
Colours in the great gatsby
Portrayal of wealth in the great gatsby
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
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.
The colors white, yellow, blue, and green shape the novel’s characters and plot, resulting in a vivid story of love and blind pursuance. As mentioned earlier, the color green is one of the most recognized colors symbolically. The color green symbolizes future, or the American dream, and is most associated with Gatsby himself. This is what Gatsby is pursuing throughout the novel until he tragically perishes, his dream never becoming a reality.
First off, Fitzgerald uses the color green to symbolize Gatsby’s money and love
The color symbolism in The Great Gatsby is represented by the colors green, pink, and black. The color green is represented by the light at the end of the dock in The Great Gatsby. “possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of the green light…”(Fitzgerald 93). The green light means a lot to Jay Gatsby it represents what he wants and what he has.
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.
“It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory we started to town.” (68). The color yellow is to symbolise wealth in the novel. This describes how lavish, eye catching and extravagant Gatsby’s car is and how it is meant to catch your attention when you look at it.
The color green has its own significance in the novel, as it is mainly attached to Gatsby. The color green is usually attached with nature as in rebirth of spring, growth, wealth, hope and envy. Green embodies Gatsby’s dream and the perpetual pursuit of it. The green color is visited by the reader for the very first time through the element of the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock.
A symbol in a novel is a concrete object that represents an idea or a set of ideas. Choose 3 symbols in the book and explain what they mean and how they function together to support a central theme. The Great Gatsby novel has various numbers of symbols that are descried and each symbolise very different things. Three symbols that this essay is going to further investigate are the green light, Gatsby’s gold and silver suit and the Valley of Ashes.
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.
In chapter nine, Nick said, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . and one fine morning - so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (Fitzgerald 189). This supports Fitzgerald’s message to the reader about the American Dream because the green light stands for everyone’s hopes and dreams and desires, however, it is unattainable.
The green light is the light located at the end of Daisy’s dock. It symbolizes Gatsby’s hopes and dreams and represents everything that would likely to stand in Gatsby’s way: distance between Gatsby and Daisy, and the gap between the past and the present. The reason Gatsby decided to become rich was to attract and get Daisy. Like the green light across the water, it seems so close, but so far away. In the beginning of the book, we can see that Gatsby is the one who is grasping for the light.
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).
The color grey often symbolizes dull and lifeless characteristics or a state of depression. During the 1920s people in the working class were described as “grey” as they chased their goals they could never achieve. The Great Gatsby is a story of people who try to gain and reach success in a world where social classes vary significantly. In his novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the color grey in both characters and settings to portray the disillusionment of the American Dream through his characters' corrupt ambitions and amoral behavior.
Fitzgerald might have chosen to make his shirt silver to represent Gatsby’s wealth, but his tie which sits on top of his shirt is described as gold-colored instead of gold which could be because Fitzgerald only uses gold to describe “old money”. The gold-colored tie on top of the silver shirt could symbolize that Gatsby’s illegal actions have more of an impact than his wealth nullifying his money’s value. After some time at Nick’s house, Gatsby asks Daisy and Nick to come over to his house to give them a tour. Showing Daisy and Nick, his house he presents everything like he is a magician and each thing he shows them is a new trick. When they get to his bedroom, he tells Daisy and Nick about the Englishman
This shows the deep desire to have a better life. In comparing the use of green in “The Great Gatsby” and the description of how green appears to most humans it’s obvious to see how Fitzgerald uses this color for envy and