What Does The Gold Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

Books are written using imagery and symbolism all the time. Many colors are used throughout The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald that represent big ideas. He does this to get a point across without directly saying it. The imagery of yellow and gold in The Great Gatsby symbolize desire, death, and social classes.

Yellow and gold represent a desire for a woman. Both Nick and Gatsby show a desire for a woman, and both women are described in terms of yellow and gold. First, Gatsby’s desire for Daisy. Just as the golden sun is very bright, Daisy is very bright. “Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth” (9). Even though it does not actually say anything about the sun or the color, it still

The biggest example of this in the book is when Myrtle is hit and killed by Gatsby and Daisy. A witness to the crime says, “It was a yellow car, big yellow car. New” (139). Gatsby’s desire is directly related to death when he kills a woman in the same yellow car that connects his desire to Daisy. The color shows how his desire is destructive. Not only does it get Myrtle killed, but it gets himself killed. Gatsby is murdered by Wilson, Myrtle’s husband. “The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of transit, a thin red circle in the water” (162). Gatsby is shot and killed in his pool, and there are leaves around his body. Just as Jordan’s hair is “autumn-leaf yellow,” these leaves are yellow. The yellow leaves died and fell off the tree, surrounding Gatsby’s dead body. His desire gets two people killed, including himself, and the color yellow is related

The billboard with Doctor T.J. Eckleburg on it looks out over the Valley of Ashes, where the lower-class lives. “But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg… They look out of no face, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose” (23). Eckleburg represents the Valley of Ashes as he sees everything that happens there through his yellow glasses. Not only are Eckleburg’s glasses yellow, but the buildings are too: “The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of waste land” (24). The color of the buildings in this wasteland is yellow. Yellow clearly symbolizes the lower class. On the other hand, gold symbolizes the upper class. Tom and Daisy’s house reflects gold: “The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon” (6). Tom and Daisy, who are of the upper class, are described using the color gold. As stated before, Daisy is “the golden girl” and Jordan’s arm and shoulder are golden. Both of these girls are wealthy, and gold is used to show it. Yellow represents the lower class while gold represents the upper