* Antonella´s Portfolio *: My First-Term Paper

Symbols in The Great Gatsby

Symbols are representations of reality, complex concepts or ideas. They can be objects, pictures, or even written and spoken words. Some symbols are universally known since they represent the same meanings all over the world.

The Great Gatsby presents a great number of symbols which characterise not only the American Society in the 1920s and the story itself, but also Fitzgerald’s own writing and beliefs. Among those symbols, three of them are recognised as the most important ones since they are very closely related to the main topics and ideas of the novel. Those are: the American Dream, Colours and the Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The aim of this paper is to talk about the American Dream, the Colours and the Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg and how important they are in the story.

The American Dream is a belief in people’s prosperity regardless of social class, religion, race or ethnic group. This idea of prosperity has been first established in the American Declaration of Independence with the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (Thomas Jefferson, 1776). To achieve that prosperity, it is important for everyone to have access to education, live free and in peace, form a family and have friends. A person fulfils the American Dream when they have reached prosperity and live happily. In The Great Gatsby, however, the American Dream is seen differently, it declines. The American Dream is represented in the character of Gatsby who makes everything possible to earn money and become a millionaire in order to impress Daisy, the love of his life. The following quotations taken from the original book shows us that the only thing Gatsby wants is to fulfil his American Dream by reaching Daisy, she represents his idea of happiness, but in order to reach her, he has to have money:

"Her voice is full of money" (Fitzgerald, p.127)

He even needs an enormous mansion to show Daisy how rich he is:

“-That huge place over there? -Do you like it? - I love it." (Fitzgerald, p.95)

People believe money and a good economic position are the keys to happiness, the keys to achieve the American Dream; Gatsby believes richness is the key to win Daisy, his American Dream. He gives us the idea of the decline: richness means prosperity, be rich to be happy. This decline of the American Dream, an important characteristic of the Roaring Twenties, is present throughout the novel to create in the reader the idea of happiness as something unreachable.

In Fitzgerald’s novel, colours are associated with feelings, social status, and objects. These colours are mainly white, golden and yellow, green and grey. Yellow, golden, and white are associated with richness, success, and value; while green represents envy, and grey stands for poverty, sadness and boredom. During the Roaring Twenties, only rich people wear white, yellow or golden clothes, since they are very expensive and people from the middle and low classes cannot afford buying them. In The Great Gatsby, white is the colour that Fitzgerald chooses for Daisy, all the things that she owns and all the clothes that she wears throughout the novel share this characteristic. When Nick first visits the Buchanans, he refers to this colour since Daisy and Jordan are dressed in white, her entire house is white and she has a white car.

“They were both in white” (Fitzgerald, p.13).

“The windows were ajar and gleaming white” (Fitzgerald, p.13).

Daisy refers to the colour white even when she talks with Nick:

“Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white” (Fitzgerald, p. 24)

The clothes and jewellery the people wear when they go to Gatsby’s parties are golden representing how rich they are. This colour also represents value and success when referring to Jordan Baker as the “Golden Girl of Golf”:

“I put my arm around Jordan's golden shoulder” (Fitzgerald, p. 77).

Gatsby’s car is the perfect example of richness represented by colours. Gatsby decides to buy a yellow car to show how rich he is when everybody buys blue or black cars. As regards green, in this book almost always representing envy, there are many characters described as “green with envy”:

“In the sunlight his face was green” (Fitzgerald, p. 117).

Wilson, every time Tom Buchanan brings his beautiful car to his garage; Gatsby, when thinking about Tom as the owner of his treasure; Myrtle, when realising Daisy is Tom’s real love. And finally, grey is present in the villages in the factory areas, where everything is full of smoke and dirt and where people don’t feel happy, but fed up with everyday the same monotonous routine:

“... a grey, florid man with a hard, empty face” (Fitzgerald, p. 97) when referring to the portrait of Dan Cody in Gatsby's bedroom.

I believe that colours add meaning to Fitzgerald’s words. We can realise how the characters feel and how their personalities are by just interpreting the colours they are associated with.

The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg represent the eyes of God staring at the city. This gives the impression that everything people do is being observed by God. This idea is represented in the following quotation in which Wilson remembers a conversation he had with Myrtle before she died:

“I told her she might fool me, but she couldn’t fool God. I took her to the window… and I said ‘God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!” (Fitzgerald, p.159).

Reading this fragment, we can realise how devote of God Wilson is. In the novel, God is thought to be the witness of everything that happens. Only his eyes see, for example, the way in which Myrtle cheats on Wilson and the accident that kills her. Those eyes, always looking at everything that happens, represent a belief shared by almost all the society of the moment: God knows everything.

The Great Gatsby, one of Fitzgerald’s most famous writings, is full of symbols which make this novel interesting. The American Dream and its decline, the Colours which characterised the society during the Roaring Twenties and the Eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, add meaning to his words, and help us imagine the situations the characters live throughout the novel.
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