The Symbolism in the Novel the Great Gatsby The symbolism of setting expressed by Fitzgerald in the novel The Great Gatsby adds important values to the story. Fitzgerald creates a plot of love, money, society, and success mixed together to show us the values he learned himself. He describes how the dreams of a character relates to understanding the influence of power. There are three main settings: The East Egg, The West Egg, and The valley of Ashes. In these three settings we see different ways Fitzgerald uses color, materialism, and the way society acts in each setting to demonstrate the impact on wealth distribution. Nick begins describing a map view upon the west egg and the East egg in chapter 1(p.5). Fitzgerald utilizes imagery to allow …show more content…
It was where the people that thought they had achieved the American dream lived. Gatsby as our most important example shows us in color. He likes to expose his wealth by having “large parties” where there is live music, alcohol, bright lights, and people from the non-elite and elite social class (p.49). Nick describes to us the preparation toward the party, he mentions how [the juice from two hundred oranges is extracted every week for his parties] implying the measures he takes to make his party extravagant (p.39). Most of the people attending the party are new money and belief to be experiencing the American dream of glamour and wealth. In chapter 7 of the novel when Gatsby wears the pink suit it becomes clearly evident he is not old money and does not belong to the elite class. Tom uses color as symbolism when stating Gatsby as “incredulous” “Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit.” there was no way someone from old money like tom would ever wear such a color. (p.122). Gatsby extravagant loud yellow car is also symbolic when describing the West egg. It is a flashy yellow car very noticeable and unique that Gatsby uses to expose his wealth. It was also the tool that caused his ruin, and can be interpreted as the drive of the American dream towards wealth and
Janessa Collingwood Mrs Forker English 11-0 1 March 2023 Symbols in The Great Gatsby Throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald’s infamous novel The Great Gatsby he uses multiple symbols to symbolise the moral conflict in pursuit of the American Dream. The American Dream is a major theme in The Great Gatsby and the life of Jay Gatsby is a personification of the American Dream. Jay Gatsby lived in West Egg, in Long Island during the roaring twenties.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby to represent the roaring twenties lifestyle and the ever changing American Dream during the 1920s. Symbolism plays a drastic role in bringing the essay into a more perspective view for readers by growing characters, creating suspension and motivating the reader to continue reading. The Great Gatsby contains large amounts of symbolism, making it one of America's most loved novels. Fitzgerald uses different concepts of symbolism by integrating weather, location, colors and signs into the book by playing out relatable situations, for example the tension during hot weather. The valley of ashes played a very significant role in the book The Great Gatsby by creating a definition of the classes.
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel that includes objects and ideas with deeper meanings than they appear. Throughout the book, there are multiple things that show great importance in fully understanding the concept and idea of what it was like to live during the 1920s. There are simpler symbols in The Great Gatsby, such as the valley of ashes and the colors used, but then there are others more elaborate, like the green light that Gatsby always reaches for and the disguise that money seems to bring. Symbolism also appears in the setting, too. West Egg and East Egg both hold a certain significance to understanding what type of people live in the area.
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. "
While the use of colors mostly explains Gatsby himself, Gatsby’s mansion is also another symbolic reference that applies to the character. The huge scale of the mansion shows an immense amount of wealth but the inside of it is too vacant for one person to live in it, just like how Gatsby appears to be rich but is really lonely. Yet he tries to justify this emptiness by filling it with people every week during his parties, similarly to how he justifies how he got his fortune by making Daisy his entire focus. As a matter of fact, the entire mansion symbolizes his passion for her by using the “new money” from West Egg to build a house that is on par with the “old money” of East Egg, the people who took Daisy away from him. What may seem like a
The Great Gatsby by, F. Scott Fitzgerald, is during the 1920’s, also called the “roaring twenties” which was a period that was characterized by jazz music, freedom, alcohol, freedom, and the ban on alcohol during the Prohibition Era across the nation which made bootlegging a problem. Throughout the novel characters are introduced and opinions are established about them. Symbolism is used to give ideas a deeper meaning in different ways in literal or not. It is clear that Fitzgerald, the author, gave us clear examples of many symbolic things which may include people, objects, or places. Fitzgerald has placed two important symbolic items in the
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.
Another environment displaying the corrupt madness of wealth through the critique of the carelessness of those who have wealth, are Gatsby’s parties. Gatsby’s parties are a menagerie of people of all walks of life. Gatsby’s parties are exotically, delightful experiences: upon entrance “the lights grow brighter...laughter is easier, minute by minute,” and “once [one arrived] there they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks” (44,
Nick relies heavily on the symbolism and function of windows in the narration to subtly express his own exceedingly observant nature and perceptive mind. He knows that how people appear to live and how they really live are always different. Because of this understanding, he wants to truly experience other people’s lives for how they are. He wants to be able to experience firsthand how they act and compare to what he observes they try to act, and he communicates this through the complex imagery of windows. He understands that Gatsby feels “emptiness” inside him (55).
A theme is a lesson that a literary text conveys about humanity. Is Edgenuity meaning of theme. Spark notes meaning is that they are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in literary work. In short, a book’s theme can usually answer the question, “what’s the point of this book?”
The Writer painter and designer Johannes Itten said, “Color is life; for a world without color appears to us as dead. Colors are primordial ideas the children of light.” Fitzgerald decided to use many colors in the novel The Great Gatsby. He used many colors and each color had a special meaning. The special meaning is focused more as a theme that is involved threw out the novel.
Fitzgerald makes Gatsby a lot like the boss of the West Egg, his mansion centers the entire location and his parties are what everyone goes too. The East Egg is made up of people who inherited money from their families. Fitzgerald uses this location to build a negative opinion about the people of this egg. It represents rules of formative and tradition. Many of the homeowners are exclusive, opulent, and self regarding.
The outer appearance of the sought after lives that the rich lived are exemplified by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby. A variety of tools are used by Fitzgerald in his novel to portray the wild emotions and feelings of the upper class throughout the book, with one of the main literary elements used being color. Fitzgerald’s usage of the color gold portrays traditional wealth and success, which contrasts with the usage of the color yellow, a fake gold, to symbolize desperation and corruption.
In the great Gatsby it is seen as the “east egg” and the west egg”. The east egg represent people who have old money also known as the ancestral wealth which is run in the family. The west egg represent people who had recently climbed up the socioeconomic status. This could be clearly seen in the great Gatsby as fitzgerald portrayed in the disguise of clothes. Jay Gatsby is seen wearing multi colored dresses at different occasions which made him look different than other people like tom who has old money.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, tackles social and ethical problems that are found in his own time. Fitzgerald was born in Minnesota and as he became a writer, he moved to “the racy, adventurous” (Fitzgerald 56) New York City in 1919. In the film, director Baz Luhrmann accurately portrays the differences between East and West using colors and the positioning of the camera to show Fitzgerald's position. Fitzgerald's goal was to portray the backgrounds of his characters into a never ending chain of cause and effect, from where they once lived to their present situation and how that affects their personality.