Jannielle Jimenez
Mrs. Harrington
AP Lang; Period 4
6 June 2015
Focus Questions
1. Fitzgerald utilizes his characters' names to symbolize aspects of their personalities and convey their roles in the novel by creating their character arc to correspond to their names.
In addition, the name symbolism relates to the 1920's society and the themes in the novel by acting as emphasis for the audience to uncover the corruption and immorality concealed by the glamour of the era's society. For instance, Fitzgerald expresses, "So he [Gatsby] invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would like to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end" (104). As the name "Jay" is symbolic of a bird that flies from his habitat
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Through imagery, Fitzgerald is able to utilize colors in the novel to add symbolic significance to characters, events, and locations. This color symbolism helps convey the themes in novel because it acts as "red flags" for the audience to concentrate on. For instance, Fitzgerald expresses, "The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key higher" (44). Fitzgerald paints the image of the sun gradually rising to demonstrate the wealth's alcohol and carelessness rises as well. Due to the fact that monetary value is needed in order to purchase liquor, their wealth acts a the source of intoxication both in their drunken state and their mentally-corrupted state. As the audience is left with a strong impression of the color yellow and its representation of the novel's theme of the wealth's corruption, Fitzgerald executes his purpose of color symbolism. Furthermore, Fitzgerald illustrates, "Michaelis wasn't even sure of its color-he told the first policeman that is was light green. The other car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust" (144). Fitzgerald creates a vivid image of Wilson's death to draw attention to green car that eradicates her. He utilizes the color green to signify the death car is Gatsby's automobile; metaphorically, the green light also demonstrates Gatsby's drive to attain Daisy and his wealth. By destroying the car of Gatsby's, Fitzgerald conveys the theme that the American Dream disintegrates along with it. Thus, imagery allows Fitzgerald to shed light onto key characters and events, providing the audience "flags" to uncover the novel's
The Great Gatsby is a symbol itself. The Great Gatsby was written to represent the rise and fall of the American Dream. The author places the rich and wealthy lifestyle on a high pedestal while he shows the dramatic consequences of moral and social decay amongst the characters. As each turning point is revealed, the American Dream slowly crumbles in the selfish hands of those who remain ignorant to anything else in the world. The significance of the many symbolic elements in The Great Gatsby plays a role in revealing the underlying themes of the American Dream, the ongoing clash between love and wealth and social and moral destruction.
F. Scott Fitzgerald creatively utilizes colors throughout his novel, The Great Gatsby, not only to provide the reader with a rich visual image of the scene taking place, but also to convey certain symbols within the story. To begin with, one must understand what each color symbolizes. Green symbolizes hope, blue symbolizes illusion, red means violence or love, yellow illustrates wealth or death, white is innocence, and gray or black symbolizes corruption. The reader can see that color symbolism is used to characterize Tom Buchanan. Another character, Daisy Buchanan, is also associated with a few different colors. The usage of colors in The Great Gatsby conveys many ideas―personalities of the characters, foreshadowing, events in the story,
The first symbol we see appears at the end of Chapter one. It is a
Colors can tell someone an abundance of information on a topic because of the color’s warmth or the object it is most commonly seen in. Fitzgerald uses colors to further explain the meaning behind the symbols in his novel, “The Great Gatsby”. The novel is set in the 1920s in which the new rich came about. In Fitzgerald’s novel, the new rich, the old rich, and the working class socialize and create chaos; further explaining the thought that different social classes should not interact. The author Fitzgerald uses green to symbolize hope, white to depict innocence, and yellow to detect materialism and decay. Throughout his novel, “The Great Gatsby”, Fitzgerald’s use of color imagery conveys a theme.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald uses many of the literary elements found in Thomas C. Foster’s How To Read Literature Like A Professor. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses symbols to represent abstract concepts like greed and the American Dream. The American Dream and greed are two major concepts addressed in Fitzgerald’s novel. In The Great Gatsby, the main character Jay Gatsby is on a constant quest for wealth and material items, which ultimately leads to his downfall. Fitzgerald uses symbolism to convey ideas about corruption, the American Dream, and wealth in general. Through his use of symbolism, Fitzgerald is able prove that greed and chasing hollow dreams results only in misery.
People in America love to have a great deal of money. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby always wants to have money, and he finally gets it. Gatsby has parties to try to get Daisy to come to his house. Gatsby tell Nick to tell Daisy to come to Nick’s house without her husband. Gatsby finallys shows his big house off to Daisy and thinks he will win her love back again just because he has money. Gatsby’s plan do not work out. Fitzgerald uses symbols in The Great Gatsby to show how things are going wrong in America.
Color throughout history has been used to represent a variety of things. From social class to individuality, color has played an important role in identifying people or objects. Color holds a great amount of symbolic value, not only in real world situations but also in novels and visual art. Much like how color in the real world can demonstrate wealth or style, color within The Great Gatsby symbolizes important factors of the text. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses color in association with characters, objects and the world in order to give the text deeper, symbolic meaning.
Jay Gatsby mask’s his true identity through fabricating a false persona, that convinces not only him but others that he is in reach of the American dream. The symbolism of gold represents the authentic wealth, the false facade Gatsby perpetuates, in hopes of attaining his life long love, Daisy. The colour yellow represents his true identity of owning fake money. The use of yellow uncovers the mysterious rich man Jay Gatsby is made out to be, which leads to his downfall of not attaining the real money to match the high class of Daisy Buchanan. For instance we can see his house described like this, “turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten [...] One of the girls in yellow was playing the piano [...] she was not only singing, she was weeping too [ ...] Most of the remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands.” (Fitzgerald, 40-51). Gatsby’s parties were meant to draw Daisy’s attention in hopes she could realize that he has achieved the same level of success as Tom. However, Gatsby’s attempts fail as the
ideas or concepts. For example, a dove is usually used to represent peace. In the novel The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald uses a lot of symbolism to connect the characters with each other or to other objects. Fitzgerald’s use of symbolism helps advance his thematic interest in his novel of The Great Gatsby. In the Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses various colors, objects, and gestures as symbols to portray the lack of moral and spiritual values of people and the different aspects of society in the 1920's.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Gatsby with a great deal of symbolism and for good reason. Symbolism in writing adds more meaning and depth to a story and helps the reader think about underlying themes. It can show what is really going on under the surface of the plot. Several issues exemplified through The Great Gatsby were that wealth and power corrupt, people aren’t what they seem, you can’t go back to the past, actions have consequences, and that the idealistic American dream has been replaced by materialism and greed.
Gatsby is not misleading, and cares and hopes for the best to every one of the characters he meets. Gatsby progressed in a multitude of ways, such as how he talked and thought of certain people such as Daisy. The way F. Scott Fitzgerald described Gatsby as a character and how he progressed Gatsby couldn't be more fitting as a caring and more respectful kind of guy. How Gatsby relates to society is that he threw parties and how a lot of rich people went to his parties. He may even be able to challenge societal norms because of how he brought himself up to be a kind of character who looks like a rich guy who is just like everyone else, normal, but really he had so much inside of him that Nick Carraway(friend and Narrator) can for some reason only see. Through this journey, some may feel that Fitzgerald wanted to that there is always some sort of light around, maybe you will have to look hard for it but there will always be light, in Gatsby’s case, there was a green light, and how he looked at the light made it seem as it was his hope, but not for loss. As Gatsby says "single green light" and how it was "unattainable dream," the "dream [that] must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it”. This is one of Gatsby’s quotes that he used with a reference to the green light.
In life everyone strives to get rich, but is having an abundance of money always good? Sometimes people use money for personal benefits, sometimes it's for the benefit of others, but at times people with money use it to create their social status. In The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the idea of wealth is seen throughout. Jay Gatsby, who lives next door to Nick Carraway; the Narrator of the story, wants to be with his dream girl Daisy. Gatsby is wealthy and throws parties to impress Daisy. Daisy however, is married to another man Tom Buchanan. Throughout the story the people with money use it to create their social status. In The Great Gatsby F.Scott Fitzgerald uses symbolism to convey, wealth causes people to assert
F. Scott Fitzgerald is an author who is highly recognized for his use of symbolism in his works of literature. The use of symbolism in any work of literature is very important because it is used to represent something through something else. It is also used to help create emotion and enhance the story. Fitzgerald portrays symbolism in The Great Gatsby through the green light, T.J. Eckleburg, and the colors used for description.
Fitzgerald creates the original character James Gatz, an impoverished midwestern teenager, in order to show that Gatsby came from a poor background and was not content with what he had. Gatsby's shame of his background drives him to work as diligently as he can in order to escape the grasp of poverty and to push his past as far away from himself as possible. Fitzgerald then shows how Gatsby decided to completely transform himself by working diligently and then changing his name to the Jay Gatsby, a name associated with elegance and power. Fitzgerald is able to create this association in the reader's head without them even knowing it, leading to an emphasized transformation of an average midwestern teenager to one of the most iconic and remarkable characters in all of literature. Fitzgerald is able to convey that anyone from any socioeconomic status can become extremely successful if they have grit and a strong work
The book The Great Gatsby is written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, it’s a narrative told from the perspective of Nick Carraway. He tells the story of the tragic life of Jay Gatsby and talks about the society of the wealthy people with high social status. He talks about the conflict between the two huge power Tom and Gatsby, due to their similarity in their money and social status, while they compete for dominance and masculinity by fighting over Daisy. Through Nick’s narration and his close relationship with Gatsby, the readers realize that the motive behind everything that Gatsby does is to win back Daisy’s heart to repeat the past, the first time when he fell in love with Daisy.