What Does Yellow Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

For years gold has been the quest for individuals to acquire status and wealth among their peers. The booming rise of wealth during the roaring 20’s along with lavish lifestyles brought the journey to obtain this wealth higher than before. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, set in 1922 tells a story of a young James Gatz whose life quest was to achieve gold, though all he acquired was the tarnished gold otherwise seen as yellow. Gatsby’s envy of the rich from such a young age resulted in his own demise through his scandals and cheats to wealth including Daisy. Yellow’s contrast with gold depicted throughout Gatsby’s life, exemplifies the way individuals always try to achieve those/things they cannot have and envy those who do.
Literature describes yellow in decaying, rotten ways. Yellow written in Le Gallienne’s essay explains “yellow leads a roving, versatile life”(Clair 70). Gatsby’s

Though he eventually had the mansion, the money and the infamous parties he was left without one trophy on his wall of collections, Daisy Buchannon. Daisy was the last prize to be won proving further how he saw her as an item to collect not to love. The parallel between yellow and gold, Daisy and Gatsby, stems from the envy Gatsby had to win Daisy and everything she represented. He cheated his way into the money which Tom eventually finds out towards the end of the book, then reveals this to Daisy. Symbols of achievement often come in the form of gold, for example the 1st place winner gets a gold medal in the olympics and that is what Daisy was for Gatsby. Gatsby saw Tom as competition and when Daisy revealed that she loved them both Gatsby was an equal with Tom. Gatsby reaches the upper class but due to his envy and extremeness he will never obtain a life that he did not have in the beginning. Gatsby’s “jaundiced” lifestyle of jealousy eventually closed where he “disappeared among the yellowing trees”(Fitzgerald 161)(Ferber