What Does Yellow Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

James Coughlin

Mr. Yappel

English II D

26 April 2023

Color in The Great Gatsby Symbolism is used throughout The Great Gatsby to give significance to specific ideas and objects, like the significance of the weather, the time of year, the color of one's car, etc. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses color for symbolism throughout the novel. Each color, meaning something different from another, predominantly yellow, blue, and green show up a lot throughout the novel. In The Great Gatsby, the color yellow is the most commonly mentioned color in the novel. The color yellow symbolizes wealth, extravagance, and materialism. For instance, Gatsby’s extravagant, bright, yellow car, represents his wealth, high-class status, and his materialistic behaviors, “a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes.”(Fitzgerald 64). This description of Gatsby's car shows how he cares for materialistic things to impress others. However, the color yellow also symbolizes corruption. "a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and

The description of eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg is described as "blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose"(Fitzgerald 23). The blue eyes of Dr. Eckleburg represent the hope of the characters even when bad is around them they still hold on to the hope of goodness. the "blue lawn" at Gatsby's mansion, which is “planted in the rose garden of the Hotel de Ville at Normandy” The lawn represents the illusion of how Gatsby obtained his wealth, that he is morally right and nothing wrong with how he got his wealth but really is an illusion because he really got it by