25 Symbols in The Great Gatsby: The American dream gone wrong

Through searching, I have found something quite interesting, it is called "The Twenty Five Symbols in the Great Gatsby"

It states various points of the story as a specific colour and what each colour symbolises, in reference to the story. It refers to symbolism of people and topics.

Color Symbolisms:

1) Gray is the color for dreariness. It symbolizes the lack of life and/or spirit. It is the place of no hope, no future. In the book this place is called the valley of ashes where everything is covered in gray dust-even the people. This would not be a place where you would want to be.

2) White is the color that has the deeper meaning of false purity or goodness. Daisy and Jordan are always seen in white. Also, Gatsby, when he wanted to meet Daisy again for the first time in 5 years, he wore a white suit as if to show that he was good and pure.

3) Green represents so many things in this novel. One thing is that it means is something to hope for, to reach out for, and a hope of new.Like the green light that is at the end of Daisy and Tom’s dock. In the first chapter Gatsby is reaching out for the light. He is reaching out for his hope of Daisy and a life with her It also represents wealth and prosperity. And both of these meanings correlate with each other because in the book, wealth is something to hope for and to reach out for.

4) Red represents blood and death, as in the bloody death of Myrtle.

5) Yellow is in many facets of the book. Yellow in general means corruptness and things that go bad. –Yellow leaves represent decay and corruptness. –The yellow of Gatsby’s car represents corrupt dishonesty and deception.

7) Gold represents wealth, but, more so, the show of wealth. Gatsby tried to win Daisy back by his parties and the show of wealth.

Symbolism of people

8) Myrtle, Tom’s mistress, epitomizes the idea of a shrub that supports life, vitality. Because she is full of life, and makes spontaneous descisions.

9) Daisy embodies a fragile flower, because she is a fragile person who can’t make up her own mind.

10) Tom represents power, but mostly the abuse of the power that he has been given.

11) Nick is someone who stands to the side. He has his own opinion, but he doesn’t always express it. However he was one of the main people who connected Gatsby to Daisy, which turned out to be a really bad thing. He was like the un-innocent bystander.

12) Gatsby represents the result of a dream deferred. He overestimated what it would be like with Daisy, so much that she could never in all her life live up to his expectations. The more that the hope did not come alive, the more he dreamed, and that made it all the worse for him and Daisy.

13) There is a character that we hardly ever see, and we do not even know his true name, however he is truly imperative to the book. He is called Owl-eyes. He is someone who appears to be all knowing and/or all seeing. And he is there for Gatsby when nearly no one else would be. He is like God in this book, or the twisted twenties version of him.

14) Also, There is a correlation between three people. These three people are Gatsby, Myrtle, and Wilson. They were the only people to ever have truly loved, and they were the only three people who died in that whole time of deception.

Miscellaneous Symbolisms

Besides the colors and people there are many things that add to the meaning and the depth of the book.

There is he billboard with T.J. Eckelburg. The billboard is right over the valley of ashes. The billboard consists of really big eyes and even bigger spectacles. There is a plethora of meanings behind this billboard:

15) There is the meaning that he watches over everything that goes on around in the valley.

16) Also, his glasses have yellow rims which symbolize corruptness in two different ways. (1) That all he sees is corruptness, and,(2) he sees through the eyes of someone who is corrupt.

17) The empty face represents the hollowness of people and their materialistic values.

18) The empty face also represents an empty, unresponding, and dead God.

19) The season of summer is hot, and it represents the heat and boiling point of the story and or conflict.

20) Cars are a status symbol and can also represent carelessness and/or recklessness.

21) Spring represents a new beginning, a clean slate to mess up all over again.

22) Another big symbol that is exemplified throughout the book is eggs. The East and West eggs are where they live, and there is always drama going on. An egg is white on the outside, and yellow on the inside. So on both sides of the spectrum there is deception everywhere. An egg symbolizes a false show of purity on the outside, but rotten and corrupt on the inside.

23) Also the east egg represents old money that has been passed down from generation to generation.

24) The west egg represents new money that the people who live inside there have earned.

25) There is always constant bickering between the eggs because the west eggers are rowdy and don’t know how to handle themselves amongst the continually wealthy people.

The reason why I chose to write about this is because I thought it would be interesting to break the story down and analyse each point in a different way. The colour symbolism is particularly interesting.

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