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Color In The Great Gatsby Essay

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Colors have a remarkable ability to affect mood and emotions in everyday life. Usage of colors helps to convey certain feelings without any spoken words needed. Color is used throughout literature to communicate with the reader and to develop an atmosphere. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald utilizes colors to symbolize specific characters and to inject a sense of emotion into scenes. There is an array of colors used throughout the novel, but the most prominent colors are white, black, and blue. White as used in The Great Gatsby is a symbol for purity, innocence, and status. White is the color typically surrounding Daisy Buchanan. For instance, when Nick visits Daisy’s house he notes, “Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay” (Fitzgerald 6). Using white here not only shows Daisy’s purity in the choice of color, but the way she contrasts from her husband Tom. Tom being the red portion of the house …show more content…

Daisy is seen as a higher being in Gatsby’s eyes but he not on only wants to obtain Daisy, he wants to be seen at her level of status. To illustrate, “High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl” (Fitzgerald 120). By mentioning Daisy in a “white palace” this shows that Daisy is unobtainable to someone like Gatsby. Gatsby has new money and will never be seen in the same way that Daisy is. This also foreshadows the fact that Daisy will never leave Tom because she is secure in her “palace” and being with Gatsby could jeopardize her status. White is a status symbol for Tom as well, considering he sees white people as the dominant race. Tom thinks that minorities or black people are rising up too much in society. This showcases Tom’s unlikable personality and fear of being upstaged by a lower class. “White” to Tom means old money and Tom shows little respect to people who actually have to work for

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