Use of Symbols and Symbolism in The Great Gatsby Essay

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.

Good Morning Mr Peinke and 11A today I will be discussing how F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, uses the techniques of symbolism and characterisation to position readers to view the George and Myrtle Wilson, a married couple living in the Valley of Ashes during the 1920’s. While the 20’s were a great time of optimism, Fitzgerald portrays the much bleaker side of the revelry by focusing on its indulgence, two-facedness, shallow recklessness. While we don’t know a lot about Myrtle and George Wilsons background, through the descriptions given by Nick and other characters the readers have been positioned to view them given their status.

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.

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

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.

The most noticeable colours to come across are green and white. Green colour stands for peace along with Gatsby’s perseverance to marry his love, Daisy. This colour maintained perception of many changes, opinions, and beliefs which Gatsby faced throughout the novel. Green meant dedication and peace, too. Green light also was depicted by at the end of Daisy's dock. F. Scott Fitzgerald used this colour to describe the life of Gatsby as peaceful before he meets Daisy again. After their reunification, they were in Gatsby’s bedroom, looking at the bay. Gatsby looked and pointed out the green light and said “If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay” (92). Then he continued “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock” (92). It was portrayed as a Gatsby’s long-life love to Daisy. He had been looking at the light as well. Later in the book, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote "His dream must have seemed so close that

The Great Gatsby is one of the most read pieces of literature throughout the current modern Western world. High school kids all across the globe must learn and read it as part of their curriculum. One of the aspects that makes this novel so notable is that Fitzgerald, at no point in the story, needs to convey to his audience the theme of his novel directly. The main points of his novel are brought out by the powerful symbols he infuses in the book. Not only does he use them to convey his theme, but also ties them in to the rest of the story. Every aspect of this book is affected by the presence of one of his symbols. Through the use of the green light, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, and the Valley of the Ashes as symbols,

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.

The East Egg and West Egg are symbolic of the effects of wealth and the corruption of values. The West Egg is the home of the newly rich, like Gatsby, and those like him who have made huge fortunes, but lack the traditions associated with old wealthy families. The West Egg made up of families like the Buchanans, have a tradition of money, have grown up with money and have never had to work for anything     

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

Daisy represents the pureness of white in the house, and Tom represents the aggression and dominance of red. Also located in Tom and Daisy’s house is the unique“wine colored rug”(12),which possibly foreshadows the blood that Tom and Daisy both cause Gatsby to shed in the end. Finally, after heading back from Tom’s mansion Nick passes garages with “new red gas pumps that sat out in pools of light”(25), which is also another foreshadowing of Tom’s mistress’ death and her blood being shed at the Valley of Ashes. Tom and Daisy’s house is very symbolic when described as either being white or red, or both. Daisy represents the white in the house with her innocence and purity. Tom represents the red with his aggression, anger, and “hot-head.” The two totally different colors represent how different Tom and Daisy are, and how much tension there is in the house. Fitzgerald foreshadows Gatsby and Myrtle's deaths many times, using the color red and various colors and different

The Great Gatsby is filled with symbols and symbolism, which try to convey Fitzgerald's ideas to the reader. The symbols are uniquely involved in the plot of the story, which makes their implications more real. There are three major symbols that serve very important significance in the symbolism of the novel. They are "the valley of the ashes," the reality that represents the corruption in the world, the green light of Daisy's lap that Gatsby sees across the bay and lastly, the symbolism of the East Egg and West Egg or more important the east and the west of the country.

West Eggers are the newly rich; the people who have worked hard and earned their money in a short period of time. Their wealth is epitomized on material possessions. Gatsby, like the West Eggers, lacks the traditions of the East Eggers. He is considered 'new money', in the sense that his wealth came to him more recently through his own success. Although Gatsby is now a part of this class, his faith and belief in the success of his dreams has allowed him to preserve some morality. Nick Carraway, the narrator of the novel, lives in West Egg and exhibits honesty in this place of superficiality. Clearly the West is able to preserve some ethics while the East is not able to grasp any. Although West Egg is the more moral, it is still a place of superficiality and materialism.

Symbolism provides an imagery that helps facilitate a deeper understanding. Taking place in the 1920’s, The Great Gatsby, is set during a time when society both put up facades while also striving to achieve wealth and high social status. The classic novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald cleverly uses multiple symbols throughout the novel to expose the issues with society at that time. The ultimate goal of this novel is to elaborate the class struggles and illustrate the goal to achieve of American dream. The Great Gatsby, The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, uses the infamous green light, the metaphor of an egg, and pearls to show and support the overall theme of the American Dream.

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.