What Does The Green Light Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

Color in The Great Gatsby The iconic cover of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is bursting with color as it depicts a woman’s face with gold eyes and deep red lips floating in the dark blue sky over a vibrantly-lit New York City. This cover reflects The Great Gatsby’s text, as the book itself is also bursting with color. Throughout the book, Fitzgerald utilizes colors such as green, yellow, gold, and white to represent different characters and events. Far and away the most famous color of The Great Gatsby is green. One of the most well-known plot points in The Great Gatsby is Gatsby’s obsession with the green light he can see across the bay from Daisy Buchanan’s dock. The reader learns of this green light early on in the novel, when

The use of green in relation to Gatsby’s love for Daisy has a few interpretations. One possible meaning of the green light is that it represents hope and the future. At the end of the novel, Nick tells us that, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (182). Gatsby believed that the green light represented a future life with Daisy. Nick does not exactly refute this claim, but seems to have less hope in the future, saying that “It eluded us then, but that’s no matter” (182). Another interpretation of the green light is that it represents envy and jealousy. After all, one of Shakespeare’s most famous quotations was that jealousy “is the green-eyed monster which doth mock/the meat it feeds on” (III.iii.195-196). Throughout the entire play, Gatsby is longing for a life he does not have. He longs to be with Daisy, but she has married

Unsurprisingly, gold represents wealth. Gold is assosciated with “old money”—not these new-fangled dollar bills” (Shmoop Editorial Team). Because of the Buchanans’ association with the “old money”, they represent legitimate wealth. Both Jordan Baker and Daisy are viewed as “golden girls”, the ideal woman of the 1920s. On the other hand, “yellow is fake gold” (Shmoop Editorial Team). Yellow is a paler shade of gold and could be seen as a poor imitation. Indeed, throughout Fitzgerald’s novel he uses the color yellow to represent a desperate attempt to be wealthy. Myrtle Wilson, whom Tom Buchanan is having an affair with, is noted to be wearing yellow several times throughout the novel. Gatsby’s car, which kills Myrtle Wilson and ends up getting Gatsby killed, is yellow, and according to a pie graph in Samkanashvili’s color analysis of the novel, the color yellow just barely edges green out as being the color most assosciated with Gatsby. If yellow represents a “fake gold”, then the reader can interpret the association of Gatsby with yellow with his attempt to be the Buchanans, the “old money.” His attempt to fit in is seen when he arrives at a party “in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored tie”