Yellow In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The novel The Great Gatsby is set in the 1920’s and is narrated by a lower class man, Nick Carraway. Nick’s narration, throughout the entire novel, circles around the life of an extremely wealthy man, Jay Gatsby and those who are involved with him. As the story progresses, the characters are revealed to be corrupt, materialistic, and fake. These characters are correlated with a common feature associated with wealth and ironically happiness : the color of yellow. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s usage of the color yellow in The Great Gatsby conveys the materialism, corruption, and artificiality of society as a result of American capitalism, as well as to foreshadow the characters’ deaths. By using the yellow, Fitzgerald is able to convey the artificiality

Fitzgerald’s diction in the first quote allows the reader to illustrate the appearance of Gatsby’s vehicle in their head, and with the use of “rich” and “nickel”, the connotation of wealth comes to mind. However, Gatsby’s wealth is shown to be fake and a façade for the persona he creates to impress Daisy through the symbolism of his car, as the readers know that he gained money through fraud or selling illegal alcohol. In addition, his car is the color yellow rather than gold, which is a representation associated with money. Because of this, the author is able to further emphasize how Gatsby, like the color yellow is used as a substitute for gold, is trying to be someone he is not through false means. Another character associated with the shade of yellow is Daisy Buchanan. Though, unlike Gatsby, Daisy is described with gold, as her riches are actually inherited legally, most

One character, Myrtle Wilson, is brutally killed as she is hit by the “‘death car’ [which] didn’t stop…” (137). The car that hit Myrtle was not only yellow, but was Gatsby’s. In addition, Fitzgerald confirms that the yellow car paralleling to death was not coincidental, as he has a few other characters’ deaths connected to yellow, including Gatsby’s. Gatsby is killed indirectly due to his own car, which allows Wilson to find and end his wife’s thought-to-be murderer. Furthermore, a little bit before the murder, Gatsby catches sight of Wilson, who is compared to a ghost appearing from “among the yellowing trees” (161). Fitzgerald’s inclusion of the ghost simile further relays the image of Death itself to the readers, appearing from the dying trees or otherwise known as the Underworld, to claim its target. Gatsby’s situation becomes ironic as the fake wealth that Gatsby’s car symbolized, which was supposed to promote his reputation and earn him his love, ends up causing his death, in which reveals to the reader his pitifulness. Fitzgerald makes sure to allow the readers the knowledge of death through yellow as well with “a yellow light in a swing wire basket overhead…” (138). He has Mr. Wilson’s “eyes [...] drop slowly from the swinging light to the laden table [where Myrtle’s dead body lay…], and then jerk back to the light again (138). In this