Great Gatsby Color Imagery & Symbolism 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

Yellow being the color of gold, which symbolizes money, is an accurate representation of his wealth. The color yellow separates the rich individuals, such as Tom and Daisy, from the color green run-down individuals, such as Jay Gatsby. Gold and green used in the book thus contrastingly symbolize old wealth and new riches. The color yellow also represents positive and wealthy future which is why yellow is the center of a daisy. Tom’s greed for money is increasingly at peak throughout the book.

Colors have a large impact on society. They have the ability to affect people’s moods, appetites, and behaviors. Colors also have the ability to act as symbols. For example, the color white often acts as a symbol of innocence, and the color yellow often represents happiness. Throughout the book The Great Gatsby, multiple colors symbolize different aspects of Jay Gatsby’s life.

Throughout literature, colors are used to represent feelings, emotions and actions of characters. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the color green is used to represent the love story between Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. As he grew up and worked for his immense fortune, Gatsby transformed his life into one he felt would impress her the most. Fitzgerald uses the color green to represent Gatsby’s perfect image of Daisy, and the greed that engulfs the couple throughout the entire novel.

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

There are people who believe themselves to be pure and honest, while on the inside they truly obtain none of those qualities. The color white has always been associated with goodness and innocence; it’s usually the color one would think of when imagining an angel or the heavens. However, Fitzgerald uses this connotation with white in an ironic sense by using it to describe some of the most corrupt and none innocent people in the story. As Daniel J. Schneider states in his article on color symbolism in The Great Gatsby “White traditionally symbolizes purity, and there is no doubt that Fitzgerald wants to underscore the ironic disparity between the ostensible purity of Daisy and Jordan and their actual corruption.” Throughout the entire story, Fitzgerald is

In The Great Gatsby blue and green show Jay Gatsby’s real character and how he is as a person. “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. (p.43)” Blue is often symbolized by depression. Jay’s house is surrounded by blue gardens by showing the sadness in his life without Daisy. “If it wasn’t for the mist we could see you home across the bay...You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of the dock. (p.92)” Green often symbolizes life. In Gatsby’s

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, has deeper information hidden by colors all over the book. Each color has its own significant meaning and connects to the story in some way. From nearly all the colors on the rainbow to the color grey, there is a connection between these buried meanings behind all of the colors. Green is the most important color throughout the book because of special meanings and roles it plays on all of the characters. The color green relates to wealth and success on almost all of the characters. Gatsby is the one who brings this color to life and connects with it to show how it takes part in this story.

In this article, the color green can symbolize hope and dream. When Gatsby saw Daisy's green light, which for Gatsby Gray's life is not only a kind of hope, but also a kind of envy and jealousy. He is jealous of another man to marry his beloved Daisy, jealous of him around the house a lot of rich people. He has a green house and lawn, representing his wealth and position. Green not only brings to his hope and despair, before he died, one night, accompanied by heavy rain, he vaguely see Daisy's green, he is still waiting for the daisy back in. He did not expect that he moved to death. So green also means destruction, including the destruction of love, life, status, wealth destruction.Of course,this means that his pursuit of "America dream" although persistent, but always can not escape the final disillusion.

In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, colors are one of the most important details in the book. Throughout the story Fitzgerald cleverly uses colors in order to focus on specific themes and characters. He wrote this book in a way where one can read it for pleasure, and where one could analyze it and truly appreciate the work that he has put into this book. Every color has a specific meaning which correlates with each of the characters. Specifically, gold represents wealth, high class, selfishness, and relationships; while white represents honesty, purity, innocence, and a symbol for surrendering.

Gatsby’s world was filled with the yellow of corruption. He drove a yellow Rolls-Royce, the car that caused the death of Myrtle Wilson. At his lavish parties on West Egg Island, yellow cocktail music played as hordes of guests, including two girls in twin yellow dresses took part in illegal drinking and promiscuity. Jay Gatsby had mob ties in the city of Chicago, and when Nick returned to the Midwest, the sight of the murky yellow cars of Chicago rooted itself in his memory. Gatsby was a man who knew what he wanted and did not care to do whatever it took to acquire it. He would resort to terrible activities such as bootlegging and lies. He did anything to get the wealth that he thought would win over Daisy Buchanan. Fittingly, the last time Gatsby was seen alive, he "disappeared among the yellowing trees (167)."

     F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, uses symbolism throughout the novel to create the characters and events of the post World War I period. Colors are one way symbolism was used to develop the characters’ personalities and set up events. This is shown by colors like the green at the end of Daisy Buchannan’s dock, the color of Jay Gatsby’s car and how Myrtle and Jordan surrounded themselves by white. Other symbolisms used to set up events are the difference in the people of the West Egg and East Egg and the sign in the “valley of ashes”.

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, there is lots of reflection on symbolism, and especially colored symbolism. In this novel symbolism is a very important factor, it shows the difference between the different characters and scenes in the novel. The color green influences the story a lot. Green shows many thoughts, ideas, attitudes, and choices that Gatsby has throughout the story. White too plays an even more important role in the novel as it is used to represent some of the characters, it also talks about the drinking and the driving that happened, where the color green is more a symbol of the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby. This sort of symbolism reoccurs in different places throughout the novel, especially with Gatsby.

Gatsby’s money is more new and in actuality, is green. Yet other characters such as Daisy, who live in East Egg, are represented by colors such as gold, because there money is authentic, and real. When you think of a halloween costume to dress up as and you want to wear white, you usually think of an angel. Which is what Fitzgerald is trying to symbolize by using the color white. The color white symbolizes

The color yellow can be connected with the symbolism of greed, desire for wealth, and “old money”. Corruption is also distinctly represented by yellow, but death is also a key to yellows dark symbolism. The color yellow can be seen around a tragic death. The first time this is seen is when Myrtle is killed. She is the mistress of Tom, and is also married to a man named George Wilson. Myrtle was killed by Gatsby’s yellow Rolls Royce, in front of her yellow brick house, and under the yellow spectacled eyes of Dr.