What Does The Clock Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

Grayson Stallings

Mrs. Tollett

11th-grade American Literature

4/27/23

Symbolism in The Great Gatsby In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story, The Great Gatsby, the symbols that are used convey deeper meanings and themes. Using symbols such as the green light, the clock, and the mansion, Fitzgerald describes the destructive power of obsessive love and the decay of the American Dream. One of the first symbols that a reader is introduced to in The Great Gatsby is the green light. The color green symbolizes growth, nature, and new beginnings. In the story, the green light is situated on the end of the Buchanons’ dock, across the bay from Gatsby’s mansion. This isn’t the only time this symbol is seen as Gatsby focuses his obsession with Daisy with the

One of these color symbols is the color white. Near the beginning of the book, the houses and part of the East Egg are described by Nick with him thinking, “across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans.” (Fitzgerald 10) The color white symbolizes purity, innocence, and emptiness, although Fitzgerald uses a little irony with the color when describing certain things like Daisy and Jordan with their dresses. On the surface, Daisy and Jordan seem to be pure and innocent, but it’s discovered later that this is not true and the white is just a face for their corruption. (Schneider 2) (need more of something here) The name Daisy is also the name of a white and yellow flower. The petals are white, which compare to Daisy herself as seemingly pure on the outside, but the flower has a yellow center, and yellow is a symbol for corruption and richness and materialism. Daisy, at her center, isn't totally corrupt, but not pure like white. She is very materialistic, a sullied white, like spoiled