What Does The Green Light Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

The early 1900’s novel, The Great Gatsby, by Scott F. Fitzgerald depicts a tale of the narrator, Nick Carraway, as he experiences the corruption and carelessness of the wealthy lives in the 1920’s. Filled with danger, life in the 1920’s consists of lies, alcohol, lust, and crime which eventually lead to the death Myrtle and Gatsby. Fitzgerald highlights the usage of colors to portray ideas, personalities, wealth, and moral decay. The author uses white and red to mimic the personalities of Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Green to symbolize Gatsby’s hopes and dreams, gold and yellow to express wealth, and gray to represent moral decay. Hinted throughout the novel, Fitzgerald uses colors to contribute to the personalities of characters. White, which

The author uses the green light to show Gatsby’s journey and progress of pursing his hopes and dreams. At the end of chapter one, Fitzgerald writes, “Involuntarily, I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away”(21). The excerpt shows that Gatsby continues to long for his dream of being with Daisy, though it is far away. The green light appears again, as Gatsby gets closer to Daisy, proving to her that he is financially able to give her a happy and luxurious life. Gatsby states, “you always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock”(94). Gatsby realizes that his dream has always been present and he is now so close to making his dream a reality. The green light shows once again as the narrator states, Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (Fitzgerald, 180). After Gatsby’s death, Nick reflects on the green light and Gatsby's dream. The green light was once a symbol of hope, but is now corrupted and doomed by the social environment of the

While this can be shown by the mansions compared to the Valley of Ashes, Fitzgerald also uses color to define the social environment. In The Great Gatsby, yellow and gold are colors that enhances the ideas of wealth, as it resembles wealth and actual gold. It is also a reflection of a happy life, similar to the golden age, also known as the roaring twenties. In many of Gatsby’s grand party scenes, Nicks describes many things as golden, stating, “...turkeys bewitched into a dark gold” (Fitzgerald, 40) and “I put my arm around Jordan’s golden shoulder” ( Fitzgerald, 77). Gatsby’s parties were filled with expensive food and wealthy people. Describing them as golden enhanced the extravagance of the upper class. In contrast, Fitzgerald uses the symbol of gray and colorless to allude to moral decay and corruption. Often used as a description for the Valley of Ashes, using gray portrays unimportance, bleakness, and emptiness. An introduction of the Valley of Ashes states, “Occasionally, a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track… and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud” (Fitzgerald, 23). The author shows that the citizens who live in the Valley of Ashes are irrelevant and feel invisible, giving a gloomy and haunting feeling. Fitzgerald also writes, "mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen