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The Great Gatsby Waste Land Essay

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T.S. Eliot and the Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald’s use of T.S. Eliot and his poem, “The Waste Land”, serves a great purpose of adding symbolism and developing themes in his novel The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald tells of a part of the city, which he calls the Valley of Ashes. He explains it as being a type of waste land, using an allusion to the poem, “The Waste Land”. Above the valley of ashes hangs a large billboard of an optometrist advertisement. The advertisement portrays an image of the optometrist by the name of T.J. Eckleburg. It is not an entire image of his face, but only his eyes looking through a pair of yellow glasses. Throughout the novel, references are made to his eyes and his looking over the valley. Fitzgerald did not use Eliot’s poem alone, but also connected T.S. Eliot to the “eyes of T.J. Eckleburg”. The two names are similar enough to assume this was Fitzgerald’s intent. According to The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot’s Contemporary Prose, “Eliot began writing his long poem in late January or early February 1921, and over the next three months he completed parts I and II” (Rainey 18). This plays a part in setting the tone of the poem. The tone is dismal and gloomy, much as the world would have been in this time period with the recent loss of so many soldiers. It is composed of five parts. These …show more content…

When Fitzgerald refers to the Valley of Ashes as “a waste land”, this is a direct allusion to Eliot’s poem. This place Fitzgerald describes is a place where certain key events happen. This is where the dishonest and unethical choices and disasters take place. The Valley of Ashes is where Myrtle’s husband has his shop and therefore is the location that she is locked up in. The place she is locked up in also is the place she was killed. The waste land is where Tom and Myrtle’s secret apartment is, as well. It is the place of the billboard, painting a picture of T.J. Eckleburg’s eyes watching over

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