What Does Jay's Car Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

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The American Idealist Symbols are incorporated frequently throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby. Symbols allow an audience to grasp key points in the novel. Symbolism is the practice of representing things by symbols, or of investing things with a symbolic meaning or character. Fitzgerald uses many symbols throughout the novel to highlight key points, and each symbol is highly effective. One symbol that is significant in the novel is Gatsby’s car. The symbolism of Gatsby’s car is essential for the message of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. This symbol highlights the beliefs and aspirations of Gatsby’s life.
The American Dream involves people trying to advance wealth and status. Thus, through the desire to obtain this dream, became the significance of cars. Cars were not seen just as a status of wealth, but a sense of a fresh freedom. As seen in the novel, Gatsby possesses an elegant car, a rich and creamy Rolls-Royce. “It was a rich cream color, bright and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns” ( Fitzgerald 68). The quote demonstrates that Jay's car is a …show more content…

The unknown is represented by the distance between the water that separates Gatsby from Daisy and the dream of having her. For example, water separates immigrants from America, separates states, cities and countries and separates Gatsby from Daisy. This water represents the distance one must travel to achieve one’s dream. The water in Caught by the Sea represents decease. It consumes the narrator as it is stated that, “The sweep of it all, and letting it take me.” The water in a sense devours the narrator as a whole similar to Gatsby because he is so directed with fulfilling his dream of a life with Daisy which is measured by the