What Does The Color Gold Mean In The Great Gatsby

The characters, Jordan, Gatsby, and Tom portrayed in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, have association to colors that implement deeper meanings to the characters.

Jordan is portrayed through the book with correlation to the color gold and gray. Gold represents the idea of wealth and money, while gray represents the idea of dismay and hopelessness. Jordan is referenced in the book as the golden girl of golf in the book, she’s very well at what she does and she has become very wealthy and successful through it. Although people might reference her to a girl who’s got it all for being a well renowned golf player, she’s also referenced to have gray eyes in the book more than once. “ Her gray sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal

Countless times, Gatsby is throwing parties and having a multitude of people to embark in them. “At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam “(39). He is quite well known for his parties, which obviously draw a lot of people. Having this correlation to the parties is what really makes Gatsby drawn to the color gold, because he is the “hotspot” for almost everybody’s entertainment. At his parties there is also a significant amount of food, and in fact, even his food is gold. “ On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold” (40). The idea that even Gatsby’s food is gold, holds the meaning that he is beyond the realms of just having money, he is breathing money and is just going about life with that attitude. Furthermore, even Gatsby’s toilet is gold, which goes to show that he literally has everything in the eyes of wealth. “ His bedroom was the simplest room of all- except where the dresser was garnished with a toilet set of pure dull gold “ (91). He has a toilet of pure gold simply because he can. On the contrary, even with all his

Tom is described to have a hulky and toned body, which automatically gives the reader an impression that he is powerful. “ It was a body capable of enormous leverage- a cruel body “(7). The idea that he has a cruel body could also be foreshadowing events in the upcoming chapters, which it indeed did. “Then there were bloody towels upon the bathroom floor, and women’s voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broked wail of pain” (37). The idea of the bloody towels automatically gives the image of red, and Tom is the one responsible for causing the problem. His anger got in the way, and he lashed out on Myrtle. The reason for his lashing out, Myrtle saying Daisy’s name over and over again, might correlate to false love and the fact that Myrtle lets Tom treat her that way only makes Tom more powerful and angry. It associates with the color red because it represents love and passion, but in this case, is really indicates false love because she’s simply a mere object that Tom needs to feed his power, and she has to be kept in secret, while Daisy gets to roam around with Tom as she pleases. On another note, even his house is filled with the color red. “ We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragile bound into the house by French windows at either end” (7-8). With Fitzgerald's correlation to red with it