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Symbolism In The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald with the cover art already set in place. The cover of the book is a piece of art that contains a daunting face over a party scene, a busy city, or a car crash. Since the book was written with the cover in mind, many details of the book are seen on the cover. Some of the most prevalent themes that correlate with the cover in the book include the colors used, the eyes, and the landscape at the bottom of the cover. The first element that the cover draws one's eyes to is the overarching eyes. Inside the eyes appear to be women trapped. The women in these eyes allude to how trapped Daisy and Myrtle felt in their affairs. In the book, Myrtle is depicted changing her outfits and trying to cram …show more content…

The main colors illustrated on the cover are green, yellow, and red. The significance of the color green is centered around Daisy and Gatsby’s relationship. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock symbolizes how “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (Fitzgerald 180). The belief in this green light was enough for Gatsby to try and take back the past: his relationship with Daisy. On the cover, there is a green light is embellished on the cover with a dripping oval shape. The color and the shape in which it is presented go with the plot that Gatsby was trying to circle back into the past and be with Daisy once more. In addition, the color yellow is shown on the bottom of the cover. How Fitzgerald incorporated this into the plotline because of the car crash that kills Myrtle. The crash is shown as a burst of yellow light. Because of this crash, all the couples start to spiral while George because George tries to blame Tom for the reason this happened because he knows Myrtle is cheating on him, but does not know with whom it is. George started yelling and accusing Tom of driving, and Tom yelled back in a pit of fury “that yellow car [he] was driving this afternoon wasn't [his] …” (Fitzgerald 140)? The color yellow is typically associated with joy, but Fitzgerald turns the color yellow into something that represents …show more content…

On the bottom of the cover art, the scene depicts a party scene and then it is surrounded by darkness of the other cities that felt the impact and influence of the party city. The surrounding city is called the valley of ashes and is described as “... a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke…”(Fitzgerald ?). This wasteland is a product of the surrounding cities like East Egg and West Egg. The darkness seeps out from East and West Egg and comes into the valley of ashes. Fitzgerald cleverly uses the bottom of the cover to showcase this impact. The darkness around light in this all consuming swallowing effect is a very creative way to show social class discrepancy. Altogether, Fitzgerald's use of the bottom of the cover is to show the different social classes in the book and how one has an effect on the

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