Color and Gatsby Essay

Convey The hit the hay Age overwhelming parties, dresses and a variety of colours to symbolise the vibrant and colourful (maybe garish? ) lives/culture of people during The Jazz Age. Yellow and Gold Money, Money, Money. Oh, and Death. First off, weve got yellows and fundss, which were thinking has something to do withgold (in the cash money sense). Why gold and non green? Because were talk of the town about the real stuff, the authentic, traditional, old money not these new-fangled dollar bills. So you have Gatsbys party, where the turkeys are bewitched to dark gold, and Jordans slender flamboyant arms (3. 19), and Daisy the golden girl (7. 99), and Gatsby wearing a gold tie to see Daisy at Nicks house.But yellow is different. Yellow is fake gold its veneer and show rather than substance. We see that with the yellow cocktail music at Gatsbys party (1) and the two girls in twin yellow dresses who arent as alluring as the golden Jordan (3. 15). Also yellow? Gatsbys car, symbol of his desireand failureto enter New Yorks high society. And if that werent enough, T. J. Eckleburgs glasses, looking over the wasteland of America, are yellow.White Innocence and Femininity. Maybe. While were looking at cars, notice that Daisys car (back in advance she was married) was white. So are her clothes, the rooms of her house, and about half the adjectives used to describe her (her white neck, white girlhood, the kings daughter high in a white palace). Everyone likes to say that white in The Great Gatsby means innocence, probably because (1) thats easy to say and (2) everyone else is saying it. But come on Daisy is hardly the picture of girlish innocence.At the end of the novel, shes set forth as selfish, careless, and destructive. Does this make the point that even the purest characters in Gatsby have been corrupted? Did Daisy come off all innocent and fall along the course, or was there no such purity to begin with? Or, in some way, does Daisys end to remain with Tom allow her to keep her innocence? Well keep thinking about that one. Blue This Ones Up For Grabs Then theres the color blue, which we think plays Gatsbys illusions his deeply romantic dreams of unreality.We did notice that the color blue is present around Gatsby more than any other character. His gardens are blue, his drive wears blue, the water separating him from Daisy is his blue lawn (9. 150), mingled with the blue smoke of brittle leaves in his yard. His transformation into Jay Gatsby is sparked by Cody, who buys him, among other things, a blue coatand he sends a woman who comes to his house a gas blue dress (3. 25). Before you tie this up under one simple label, keep in mind that the look of T. J. Eckleburg are also blue, and so is Toms car.If blue represents illusions and alternatives to reality, maybe that makes the eyes of God into a non-existent dream. As for Toms carwell, you apprize field that one. Grey and a General Lack of Color Lifelessness (no surprise there) I f the ash heaps are associated with lifelessness and barrenness, and grey is associated with the ash heaps, anyone described as grey is going to be connected to barren lifelessness. Our main contender is Wilson When anyone spoke to him he invariably laughed in an agreeable colorless way (2. 17).Wilsons face is ashen, and a white ashen dust covers his suit (2. 17), and his eyes are described as pale and glazed. Were not as well as surprised when she shows up with a gun at the end of the novel. Green Life, Vitality, The Future, Exploration Last one. Were thinking green = plants and trees and stuff, so it must represent life and springtime and other happy events. Right? Well, the most noticeable image is that green flatboat we seem to see over and over. You know, the green light of the orgastic future that we stretch our hands towards, etc. (9. 149).Right before these famous last lines, Nick also describes the invigorated, green breast of the new ball, the new world being this lan d as Nick imagines it existed hundreds of years before. Green also shows upwe think significantlyas the long green tickets that the rich kids of kale use as entry to their fabulous parties, the kind of parties where Daisy and Tom meet, and where Gatsby falls in love. So green does represent a kind of hope, but not always a good one.When Nick imagines Gatsbys future without Daisy, he sees a new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted as luck would have it about like that ashen fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees. Nick struggles to define what the future really means, especially as he faces the new decade before him (the dreaded thirties). Is he driving on toward grey, ashen death through the twilight, or reaching out for a bright, fresh green future across the water?