The Great Gatsby by Scott F. Fitzgerald and The Waste Land by T.S Eliot both use imagery, foreshadowing, and symbolism to explore how the higher you go in the social ladder, the more corrupt and immoral life gets. Fitzgerald uses imagery to describe Myrtle coming down the stairs of her husband George Wilson’s shop. “Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crépe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering.” This lets the reader visualize Myrtle and see that she is wearing a spotted dark blue silk dress and she carried herself with a kind of sensual energy around her. She walked straight passed Wilson to get to Tom, her lover. In the first few lines Eliot uses imagery to describe what the Waste Land looks like. “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory …show more content…
“[Gatsby] stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward-and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.” The light on Daisy’s docks is green, and represents Gatsby’s hope he will be able to reconnect with her. He vanishes from the dock when he looks at the light, this foreshadows that Daisy might also leave his life. Foreshadowing is used in The Waste Land when the rooster crows. “Only a cock stood on the rooftree / Co co rico co co rico” This could be foreshadowing a rebirth, or starting a new since roosters usually crow to let everyone know a new day has arrived. On the flipside this could foreshadow bad weather or bad circumstances, because animals have been known to cry when these are