The Color Grey In The Great Gatsby

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 uses the color grey pervasively when describing his characters George Wilson and Jay Gatsby to illustrate their failures to obtain the American Dream. George Wilson and Jay Gatsby,

Gatsby said he was “going to fix everything just the way it was before” (110). Gatsby wants to recreate the past but does not realize that is it impossible to achieve. Even though Gatsby is wealthy, there are still signs of grey objects in his life. Gatsby’s house has “an inexplicable amount of dust everywhere and the rooms [are] musty as though they hadn’t been aired for many days” (147). Especially after George’s wife dies, Gatsby’s hopes of bringing back the past become more and more bleak and grey. The grey dust symbolizes how Gatsby will never be able to achieve his goal, yet he keeps trying, only to become a slave to his own desires affecting him negatively. Fitzgerald describes Gatsby is killed by an “ashen and fantastic figure” (161). The appearance of this grey figure indicates Gatsby’s disillusionment and death. It also means all the things including Gatsby’s dream and life are ended in the bleak and gloomy tragic grey atmosphere. Thus, the color grey is used to illustrate the impossibility of the American Dream, as both George Wilson and Jay Gatsby are consumed and ultimately destroyed by their own