Color Symbolism In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

During the 1920’s, many people would disguise themselves through the identities of someone else. In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the main characters can be seen “hiding” behind the symbolism of different colors. Color affects the mood, emphasizes the importance of events in a novel, and can also interact with the personalities of the characters. The concept of color symbolism is prominent in the novel. White, yellow, blue, green, and even the color black affect the atmosphere of scenes through association with a specific mood, and also through the actions of the characters.

When F. Scott Fitzgerald was writing The Great Gatsby, he was not only working as a writer, he was an artist painting a piece through his words. While making the lives of fictional characters come to life for the reader, one of the main tools he used to do this was by using the symbolism of colors. Nick Carraway, the main character, befriends many of the wealthiest and corrupt people of Long Island, while exposing them for what they truly are in the journeys he endures with them. His extravagant use of colors to illustrate scenes and characters helps us determine the symbolism behind them, and how they’re used to expose the true personalities of the characters.

In The Great Gatsby, the mood and tone throughout the novel is dark and lonely. The overall feeling in the novel is tragic. Gatsby is living his life trying to be someone he is not, always trying to impress others, yet in the end he is left with nothing. Fitzgerald’s use of colors develops the mood according to each character. For example, the color green is the green light on the end of Daisy’s dock which represents Gatsby’s hope and dreams for the future because Gatsby wants to be with Daisy again.

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.

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

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 The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald displays a vast amount of color symbolism, explicitly highlighting the yellow color to emphasize the reality of the progressive stages of the American Dream while being affected by character development. Gatsby's mansion party in the affluent area of West Egg includes its own "orchestra playing yellow cocktail music" (Fitzgerald 40) with a "pitful of trombones..." (Fitzgerald 40). Earlier in the novel, instances such as these appear in which the color yellow is used in a scenario where wealthy individuals are partying at Gatsby's mansion. The yellow cocktail music is meant to resemble the luxury of the rich setting, including many prosperous characters that have appeared at the mansion to party.

Grey is the color that’s everywhere among the valley implies the unfaithful condition of those people who lives there. Under the circumstance of that time, people cannot override these obstacles to be successful; therefore the American Dream is not achievable for them since the poor’ have no opportunities to progress their will. In addition when Tom told Wilson, Gatsby killed his wife in the valley of ashes. “Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small grey clouds took on fantastic shape and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind”(Fitzgerald 167). Through Wilson’s grey eyes once it again proves the dilemma people have to go through. Meanwhile Tom in this case represents the corrupted one utilizing Wilson as a tool to go against Gatsby. By applying the color grey it shows the hopeless of the poor and spreading the corruption among people. Furthermore, when Nick and Tom went to Gatsby’s party, they gathered and talk about the surrounding of Gatsby’s mansion. “It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with grey turning, gold turning light” (Fitzgerald 159). Both two colors gold and grey are being implied. Gold means the wealth, grey in another hand means the depravity that exists among the wealth. Fitzgerald used grey and gold describe Gatsby’s house since he is rich in a way, but he got his money from a unregulated way, which shows among the

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

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

While many would connect the color grey with George, the irrelevant individual who never lived up to the standards of the wealthy, we can also make this connection with Gatsby, who happens to be one of the wealthiest. Even Gatsby had, “foul dust [floating] in the wake of his dreams,” (Fitzgerald.4) revealing that although he might seem content on the outside, he is melancholy and gloomy on the inside. Nevertheless, George Wilson can be best identified as grey, boring and insignificant. When Nick first encounters George, “a white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity,” (Fitzgerald.29) showing just how distressed George truly was. He was surrounded by wealthy people living in the luscious lands of West and East Egg, yet he was stuck in the middle, in a wasteland covered in ash and soot known as The Valley of Ashes. The Valley of Ashes represents the forgotten, the, “men who move dimly and [are] already crumbling through the powdery air.” (Fitzgerald.26) Every single piece of grey, “the grey cars…the ash-grey men…the grey land,” (Fitzgerald.26) brought hopelessness and anguish upon those who passed The Valley of Ashes. The Valley stands for pain and destruction as it was the place of death of Myrtle as she, “knelt in the road and mingled her thick, dark blood with the dust.” (Fitzgerald.147) There isn’t a slim chance of happiness in The Valley of Ashes, and there never will be

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is told by Nick Carraway, Gatsby’s neighbor. Nick is an upper class American bond trader who moves to New York from the West. There, he meets his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is odd, but very wealthy. Nick becomes involved in Gatsby’s plan to rekindle a lost love between himself and Daisy Buchanan, who happens to be Nick’s cousin. Throughout this novel, color is used to symbolize numerous things.

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.

In The Valley of the Ashes the color gray can be used to describe nearly everything in the town. This includes the people, the land, the cars, and even the air. “Occasionally a line of gray cars crawl along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up and impenetrable cloud” (23). The color gray is used many times throughout the book but mainly to describe The Valley of the Ashes. Another color that is not primary and used often in the book is the color

Color imagery in The Great Gatsby is vital to the books storyline. If there was no color imagery then the reader could not associate a certain person or thing with a color or idea. Fitzgerald uses the color so people can remember the person more than just their name. The use of color imagery greatly impacts the story line.