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What Does The House Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

854 Words4 Pages

In today’s society you are judged on how much money you make and how nice your house or other belongings are. Symbolism is scattered around the novel The Great Gatsby and it is heavily based on the houses that the characters own. In this essay I will be telling you about how a characters house shows their personality and how they live their lives. You’re judged on how much money you make and how you present yourself in social gatherings no matter where you may be. It is human instinct to judge others when we first meet, or see them which may be rude but it can’t be helped; what can be helped is how we later judge that person as we get to know them and how we treat them based upon that judgment. In The Great Gatsby Tom Buchannan has a “cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning …show more content…

Gatsby has a house that “was a colossal affair by any standard-it was a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion.” His house is a very simple and not as diverse as Tom because he sticks to one style. His house is covered in a thin beard of raw ivy, showing that it is a newer house which means he has newer money unlike how Tom has old money. “Factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy”, this shows that he is an imitator instead of being creative and self-thinking. His house is a “colossal affair”, showing that he likes to show his money in the most extravagant way possible and is trying to make up for other parts of his life that he falls short in. Jay Gatsby is a very plain man who is also very emotional because he knows he can never have Daisy and shows this in his house by having a dark “marble swimming

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