Theme Of Grey In The Great Gatsby

In everyday life and works of literature, color can symbolizes a wide variety of emotions from moods to political views. When someone is feeling upset one often says “I’m feeling blue” or when someone is mad their face turns red giving that color the association with anger. Political status even uses color to represent each party, one is usually either a blue Democrat or red Republican. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby color plays a significant role throughout the story symbolizing emotions and social rankings. Colors such as green representing hope and money, grey portraying hopelessness, discontent, and low social class, and yellow exemplifies destruction and desire. Throughout the novel, the color green is one of the most

Low class presented by grey is first witnessed by George Wilson as “a white ashen dust veiled his dark suit (Fitzgerald 26).” The wealthy within the novel are associated with a brilliant, bright color of gold. In contrast, the opposite class reveals a dull, uninspiring color of grey. The colors represent the social classes and how people view one another within the classes along with the hopelessness in his and the Buchanan’s marriage. Also, the grey Valley of Ashes between West and East Egg and New York City symbolizes “Daisy and Gatsby’s inner character. It also serves to portray the materialistic society that surrounds them (The Colors of Society - Camouflaged Discontent).” The characters portray such class and wealth along with fake happiness. The Valley of Ashes looks at how they feel on the inside which Daisy and Gatsby both ooze with discontent with how they’ve made decisions and how their lives did not turn out how they dreamed. Next, at one of Gatsby’s many house parties Nick makes a list of “grey names, and they will give you a better impression than [Nick’s] generalities (Fitzgerald 61).” Though hiding behind Gatsby’s colorful parties, when the citizens are put together the colorful society is exposed for its true mess of grey. Although the guests of the party plaster wide smiles on their faces to make it seem as though they are happy, the grey names give off the truth of their sad stories from before. In addition, on the way to Myrtle and Tom’s apartment in New York stumble across “the vendor who sells Myrtle her puppy is described as a “grey old man.”(Brozak).” The fact the man is described with this color and is seen when going to Myrtle and Tom’s apartment proves that the two have inner shame and discontent with their affairs and relationships. The color grey gives off a gloomy and sad vibe of shattered hope and broken