Color In The Great Gatsby Essay

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby, exposes the corruption and greed of the Roaring Twenties. Fitzgerald is able to captivate readers' attentions through his employment of color symbolism. Fitzgerald portrays important messages in the novel by his symbolic use of colors. Colors play an important role in Fitzgerald’s descriptions of the lives of Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway and many of the other characters in the novel. Fitzgerald uses the colors white, yellow, and green to express certain sentiments to the reader, commenting what is going on in the story. Fitzgerald uses the color white to symbolize purity and innocence, while yellow is used to symbolize moral decay, and death. Green is used to represent hope and

The thoughts the men are portraying with the color green is one's hopes, jealousy,and selfishness. The way the author represents Gatsby's dream is to be with Daisy. She is the reason Gatsby does these huge, elaborate, parties just for this one woman. He strives to be with the woman of his dreams which is Daisy. Which could be seen in this quote,” Involuntarily I glanced seaward - and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.”( Fitzgerald. Pg.21 ) It is how Gatsby is in this state of hope to one day be able to have Daisy in her life. Also, the shade is seen as jealousy within the characters Tom and Wilson. In page 123 there is a conversation between the two men which showed

Crime, romance, tragedy. These qualities put together have the ability to make a fascinating book, but when taking a close look, one can find that there is more to it than that. In The Great Gatsby, colors and their connotations add another level of understanding to the book by symbolizing different social classes while creating imagery and adding to the reader's understanding of a dream. Most every color can be categorized through its connotations to the social classes they represent, mainly the old rich, new rich, and lower class. Everyday objects can all hold a deeper meaning when looking at something as simple as the color.

Colors can invoke feelings for people. Certain colors are attached to moods. Red can represent anger, green sometimes represents envy and blue can represent calm or even melancholy. Much art, music, and literature is dependent on color to convey the intended mood of the artist. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby, a man with wealth, power, and possessions is on a quest for the dream that he will never attain. He cannot have all that he already has plus the true love of Daisy. Fitzgerald creates his own unique motifs surrounding certain colors and uses these colors to emphasize the futility in Gatsby’s quest for this dream. Through the use

Green often is used to represent a fresh start someone experiences after a large change, and the change could be due to a single individual. One day, Jordan tells Nick a memory of her walking along a green lawn when

The color green is used by the author to represent that the reaching of something unattainable can lead to failure. Throughout the novel, Gatsby struggles to reach his American dream. In the past, Gatsby strongly feels as though Daisy doesn't want to be with him because he wasn't rich, so Gatsby began to seek wealth. The green light first appear at the end of the first

In general, the color white symbolizes innocence, purity, and cleanliness. In the novel, the color white is closely associated with Daisy. “White, even after one excludes near-synonyms such as silver, makes more appearances in the novel than any other single color, and something like three of every four are applied to East Egg or characters from East Egg, especially to Daisy” (Elmore 428). This quote proves that the color white contributes to a major theme in the novel. Daisy wears white to show her innocence. The first time Nick sees Daisy and Jordan, they are both wearing white. Nick describes seeing the women in the quote, “They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house” (Fitzgerald 8). It was the women, so magical and light, like birds or butterflies that flew around the house. They could fly, but they didn't fly far, only around the house which they got blown back into. These women don't have much ambition or power on their own. They are housebound, even though they can fly. In the beginning of the novel, the reader believes Daisy is innocent. Even her name Daisy is a kind of white flower. When introduced to her for the first time, people feel that she is pure, flawless, and noble. This is one of the reasons Gatsby is infatuated with her throughout his life and regards her as a pure beauty. The

We see the color green as a symbol of dishonesty in multiple lights, in multiple characters, the way that the color green was intertwined with their “lies” is a depiction of the way the system of wealth and class affects the characters. One way we see dishonesty, and the idea of wealth intertwined is after the scene where Myrtle gets hit by the yellow car, the readers and other characters know the car is yellow. In a police interview Michaelis is questioned about the

Colors are an essential part of the world around us. They can convey messages, expressing that which words do not. Gentle blue tones can calm a person and bright yellows can lift the spirits. If an artist is trying to express sorrow or death he often uses blacks blues, and grays basically he uses dreary colors. Without one word, a driver approaching a red traffic light knows to stop. Colors are representative of many things. In his novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses color symbolism throughout as a major device in thematic and character development. He uses colors to symbolize the many different intangible ideas in the book. Throughout the book characters, places, and objects are given "life" by colors, especially the more

Green is the last large color imagery in The Great Gatsby. The color green is a tremendous thing for Gatsby. He almost worships the green light at the

The novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, (add more stuff). Fitzgerald use of symbolism, usually through colors in the great Gatsby is prominent in every chapter of the novel. Too truly see the story from a more than literal perspective the reader must understand what the color symbolizes. In the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s prevalent use of the color green represents power and wealth but also showcases that the “American Dream” is unattainable false hope, that many other like Gatsby naively believes in. Those of which connect to the overarching theme throughout the novel that money is power but not love.

The color green maintains a more promising effect as opposed to the color red or yellow, therefore giving Gatsby hopefulness for the future. This color also signifies Gatsby’s main objective in life–money. With money come ambition and jealousy, which also implies societies appeal and the superficial hopelessness of achieving the common theme of the American Dream.

Gatsby has connections with many colors that assist in portraying a more extensive breakdown of his character. The colors I feel correspond with Gatsby in the most comprehensive way are blue, green, and yellow. Interpreting his hopefulness, naiveness, and ambition into colors showed Fitzgerald’s aspiration for the reader to envision the bigger picture. While people may see the colors in different ways, the general idea stays prominent. Blue helps convey Gatsby’s deep loneliness and illusions of how life becomes for him.

The color green symbolizes hope. More specifically, it symbolizes how Gatsby never loses hope in his dream of one day being with Gatsby. Fitzgerald uses the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock to show how Gatsby’s hope is always there. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (p 180). He thought as long as the light was there, he still had a chance with Daisy. The only problem is that eventually all lights turn red, and Gatsby eventually loses his chance with Daisy and then later loses his life.

Gatsby Color Analysis “The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.” (Confucius) Gatsby would change his entire life because of his desire to be with his one true love Daisy. He would do anything to impress her, and wealth was the best way to catch her eye. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, the author uses the connotative meanings of the colors green and white to develop the character James Gatsby.