Mood In The Great Gatsby

Perhaps one of the foremost pieces of American literature, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald conveys the shortcomings of the American dream in the roaring 20s. Various uses of mood, symbolism, and color reflect Gatsby's dynamic emotional dilemmas concerning his idealistic love for Daisy, his business and personal morals and eventually his death.

The largely dark, pessimistic mood of The Great Gatsby is characterized by the purposelessness and carelessness of the wealthy, the ongoing string of meaningless parties, the ugliness of the Valley of Ashes, and the tragic deaths of Gatsby and Myrtle. Regarding Gatsby’s emotional dilemma, a similar mood is conveyed in two separate events of when Gatsby and Daisy reunite and during Gatsby’s funeral

The green light represents Gatsby's dream of Daisy which can be translated to the collective idealized Dream in American society. Both are unrealistic and, for the most part, unattainable. This is directly addressed when Nick claims in the last page of the novel that "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 farther, stretch out our arms farther…." (9.149). Right before these famous last lines, Nick also describes the "fresh, green breast of the new world," the new world being this land as Nick imagines it existed hundreds of years before. Not only a symbol of Gatsby’s hope, Green as a color is an archetype for life, vitality, future, and

Is he driving on toward grey, ashen death through the twilight, or reaching out for a bright, fresh green future across the water?

The colors gold and yellow, as well as their differences, encompass The Great Gatsby.

The monetary value of gold is seen at the event of Gatsby's party, where the turkeys are "bewitched to dark gold," and the characterization of Jordan's "slender golden arm[s]" (3.19), and Daisy as the "golden girl" (7.99), and Gatsby wearing a gold tie to see Daisy at Nick's house.

Yellow is distinctly different. While gold has value, yellow is used as a characterization for corruption and shallowness. As seen with the "yellow cocktail music" at Gatsby's party (1) and the "two girls in twin yellow dresses" who aren't as alluring as the golden Jordan (3.15). Pertaining to its color, Gatsby's car symbolizes his desire and failure to enter New York's higher society, a necessity in his quest for Daisy’s love. And if that weren't enough, T. J. Eckleburg's glasses, looking over the wasteland of America, are