The Great Gatsby Color White Analysis

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, color symbolism is used to reveal important character traits and create a variety of moods throughout chapters 1-4. Fitzgerald incorporates the color white to demonstrate the virginal purity and initial innocence of some of the characters. He also uses this symbolism of the color white to differentiate between social classes. Fitzgerald then affiliates the colors gray and yellow with the dismal corruption that engulfs the novel. To tie everything together, he develops a pattern of the color green to portray how Gatsby’s world revolves around a greedy, yet romanticized dream, only attainable through money. Throughout the first chapters of the novel, Fitzgerald integrates the color white to make evident the virginal purity and initial innocence of

He also uses this symbolism of the color white to indicate high-class people. Fitzgerald reveals how Daisy and Jordan “were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house”(8). When these characters were introduced to Nick Carraway, the narrator, they wore white dresses which symbolize virginal purity to Nick. These women come off as airy and innocent during their initial interaction with Nick, but later on, we find out that this is not the case. Jordan and Daisy’s white dresses also affirm their place as wealthy ladies in a high social class. Later on, Fitzgerald explains how Nick “dressed up in white flannels [and] went over to [Gatsby’s] lawn a little after seven, and wandered around rather ill at ease among swirls and eddies of people [he] didn’t know”(41-2). In this scene, the color white represents Nick’s initial innocence to the elaborate life that Gatsby lives.