The
Valley of Ashes
Valley of Ashes represents absolute poverty and hopelessness.
“This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat
into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of
houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort,
of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.
Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a
ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up
with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure
operations from your sight. … The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a
small foul river, and, when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the
passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half
an hour.”
The lower classes who inhibit this region all want to leave but cannot.
This illustrates how the American Dream is impossible to achieve. For example,
Myrtle dies trying to escape the Valley of Ashes. Also, when Tom visits, it
shows the difference between the rich and poor.
“Hello, Wilson, old man,” said Tom, slapping him
jovially on the shoulder. “How’s business?”
“I
can’t complain,” answered Wilson unconvincingly. “When are you going to sell me
that car?”
“Next
week; I’ve got my man working on it now.”
“Works
pretty slow, don’t he?”
“No,
he doesn’t,” said Tom coldly. “And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d
better sell it somewhere else after all.”
“I
don’t mean that,” explained Wilson quickly. (Pg
28)
This confrontation of Tom and George shows how the rich look down on the
poor because of the difference in their social status. It represents the moral
and social decay hidden by the West, and East Egg. The valley is created
through industrial dumping and thus a by-product of capitalism. The people and
also the environmental are suffering. Tom, Daisy, and Jordan, with their empty,
void lives, are the characters represented as the formless bodies of ashes in the
valley of ashes. The ashes are symbols of dead, with more self-centered and
arrogant people arising from them. Every generation, the ashes pile distorting
the American Dream further.
The Eyes
of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg
The eyes of
Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an
old advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They may represent God
staring down upon and judging American society as a moral wasteland, though the
novel never makes this point explicitly. Instead, throughout the novel,
Fitzgerald suggests that symbols only have meaning because characters instill
them with meaning. The connection between the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg
and God exists only in George Wilson’s grief-stricken mind. This lack of
concrete significance contributes to the unsettling nature of the image. Thus,
the eyes also come to represent the essential meaninglessness of the world and
the arbitrariness of the mental process by which people invest objects with
meaning. Nick explores these ideas in Chapter 8, when he imagines Gatsby’s
final thoughts as a depressed consideration of the emptiness of symbols and
dreams.
Cars
The American Dream involves people trying to gain
wealth and status. And through the desire to obtain this dream, became the
significance of cars. Cars were seen as a status of wealth and a sense of new
found freedom. In the novel, Gatsby possesses countless cars, one of them being
the Rolls-Royce. “It was a rich cream color, bright and there in it’s monstrous
length with triumphant hat-boxes
and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields
that mirrored a dozen suns.” The reason his car is yellow is to attract
Daisy and to display his achievement of wealthy status. However, there is a
conflict with this materialistic view of cars. For example, the conflict arises
where Myrtle is struck and killed by a car. This exemplifies irony because
Myrtle believes the individual driving the car is Tom. Tom is her ticket to the
American Dream and leaving the Valley of Ashes. However, it is ultimately this
desire for her American Dream which kills her.
Weather
As in much of
Shakespeare’s work, the weather in “The Great Gatsby” unfailingly matches the
emotional and narrative tone of the story. Gatsby and Daisy’s reunion begins
amid a pouring rain, proving awkward and melancholy; their love reawakens just
as the sun begins to come out. Gatsby’s climactic confrontation with Tom occurs
on the hottest day of the summer, under the scorching sun (like the fatal
encounter between Mercutio and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet). Wilson kills Gatsby
on the first day of autumn, as Gatsby floats in his pool despite a palpable
chill in the air—a symbolic attempt to stop time and restore his relationship
with Daisy to the way it was five years before, in 1917.
The heat becomes oppressive during the climactic scene in the novel. Tom,
Daisy, Nick, Jordan, and Gatsby head to the city as tension increases. Nick
describes the day as "broiling, almost the last, certainly the warmest of
the summer" (102). Daisy complains, "It's so hot, and everything's so
confused" (106). linking the oppressive heat with the oppressive
situation. It's possible, as well, that the heat is, in some way, symbolic of
hell and damnation. It is in chapter 7 that Gatsby's dream is crushed and
Myrtle Wilson's infidelity is discovered.
Geography (East vs West )
Throughout the novel, places and settings epitomize the various aspects of the 1920s American society that Fitzgerald depicts. East Egg represents the old aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich, the valley of ashes the moral and social decay of America, and New York City the uninhibited, amoral quest for money and pleasure. Additionally, the East is connected to the moral decay and social cynicism of New York, while the West (including Midwestern and northern areas such as Minnesota) is connected to more traditional social values and ideals. Nick’s analysis in Chapter 9 of the story he has related reveals his sensitivity to this dichotomy: though it is set in the East, the story is really one of the West, as it tells how people originally from west of the Appalachians (as all of the main characters are) react to the pace and style of life on the East Coast.
We’re
thinking green = plants and trees and stuff, so life and
springtime and other happy things. Do we see this in The Great Gatsby? The most noticeable image is that green light we seem to see over and over. You know, the green light of the "orgastic future" that we stretch our hands
towards, etc. etc. We can definitely see green as being hopeful, as being the
future, as being vitality and freshness. Right before these famous last lines,
Nick also describes the "fresh, green breast of the new world," the new world being this land as Nick
imagines it existed hundreds of years before. The new world might be green, but when Nick imagines Gatsby’s future without Daisy, he sees "a new
world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like
air, drifted fortuitously 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?
Green also represents spring, which is a new beginning or hope.
Once also used for envy. [“In the sunlight his (George Wilson’s) face wasgreen.”]
Gatsby
The ‘green light at the end of Daisy’s dock’ is the representation of ‘The
American Dream’, the desire to succeed in life which again refers to money.
The green light also represents hope. Gatsby was hoping to restore his ancient
relationship with Daisy that has long been impossible, though Gatsby failed to
realize it because he was blinded by the hope generated by the green light. It
insinuates that hope is not always a reality.
Nick encounters Gatsby standing in Gatsby’s lawn in the dead of night, and
describes what he sees:
“…he stretched out his arms towards the dark water in a curious way, and,
far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling involuntarily I
glanced seaward – and distinguishing nothing except a single green light,
minute and faraway, that might have been the end of a dock.
The
symbolism of green throughout the novel is as variable and
contradictory as the many definitions of “green” and the many uses of money—”new,” “natural,” “innocent,” “naive,” and
“uncorrupted”; but also “rotten,” “gullible,” “nauseous,” and “sickly.”
Yellow and Gold
First off, we’ve got yellows and golds, which we’re thinking has something to do
with…gold (in the cash money sense). Why gold and not green? Because we’re
talking about the real stuff, the authentic, traditional, "old money"
– not these new-fangled dollar bills. So you’ve got your "yellow cocktail music" playing at Gatsby’s party where the turkeys are
"bewitched to dark gold" and
Jordan and Nick sit with "two girls in yellow." It seems clear, then, that Gatsby is using these parties to try to
fit in with the "old money" crowd. And it doesn’t stop there; when
Gatsby is finally going to see Daisy again at Nick’s house, he wears a goldtie. Nick later mentions the "pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the-gate," which may seem weird (since last we
checked, colors didn’t have a smell) until we remember Nick’s description of New York as "a wish out of non-olfactory
money." Odor then is associated with gold, and non-odor with money. The
difference? Perhaps the same distinction as Daisy’s upper class world and
Gatsby’s new-found wealth. While Gatsby buys a yellowcar to further promote his facade, he’s really not fooling anyone. Lastly,
we’ve got Daisy, who is only called "the golden girl" once Gatsby realizes that her voice, her main feature, is
"full of money." Yellow is not just the
color of money, but also of destruction. Yellow is the color of the car that runs down Myrtle. The glasses of Eckleburg,
looking over the wasteland of America, are yellow. This dual symbolism clearly associates money
with destruction; the ash heaps are the filthy result of the decadent lifestyle
led by the rich.
Yellow also represents corruptness. Gatsby's car is yellow, a product of his
corrupt dealings, as are the spectacles of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. It's probably
not a coincidence that the novel's most impure character is named after a yellow flower. Gold has earned its place among the all time symbols of corruption
and greed, although most wouldn't mind having more of it.
Daisy
Like her
name suggests, is a flower with white petals and a yellowcentre. It kind of shows that Daisy looks innocent and pure on the outside,
like her petals, but is rotten on the inside, which is represented by the yellow part of the flower.
She ends up
killing Myrtle even though she looks so harmless on the outside.
Then there is the lack of color presented in
the grey ash heaps. If 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." Wilson’s face is "ashen." His
eyes are described as "pale" and "glazed." It is then no
coincidence that Wilson is the bearer of lifelessness, killing Gatsby
among yellow leaved trees, which we already decided had something to do with
destruction.
Represents a dullness or a loss of hope, lack of happiness, lack of life.
Can also represent the fading of blue, which means the fading of dreams.
It is the main description of the ‘Valley of Ashes’
Jordan
- Jordan has grey eyes.
“Her grey, sun-strained eyes…”
They show lack of love and a general boredom in life because she is
surrounded by everything she wants and has no dreams and no plans for the
future.
- The first time Gatsby and Nick meet, they make a
reference to the war saying:
“We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little
villages in France.”
The villages are seen as sad as they have suffered during the war and can
also be referred to ‘The Valley of Ashes’.
Then
there’s the color blue, which we think
represents Gatsby’s illusions - his deeply romantic dreams of unreality. We did
notice that the colorblue is present
around Gatsby more so than any other character. His gardens are blue, his chauffeur wears blue, the water
separating him from Daisy is his "blue lawn," 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 coat." Before you tie this up under one simple label, keep in
mind that the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg are also blue, and so is Tom’s car. If blue represents illusions and alternatives to reality, God may be seen as
a non-existent dream.
Gatsby
- Blue is used to describe Jay Gatsby’s gardens
where people come and go to parties as they please. His “blue” gardens are
representative of a fantasyland. Blue represents Gatsby’s dreamland which he
thinks is reality.
- “In his blue gardens
men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne
and the stars”
- “He had come a long way to this blue lawn and
his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it”
- When Dan Cody buys Gatsby a blue coat,
among other things, he begins to become more prosperous and wealthy. Maybe in
the dream, his success may have been caused by the blue coat, but
in reality, it was probably just a coincidence.
While we’re looking at cars, notice that Daisy’s
car (back before 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 king’s daughter "high in a
white palace"). Everyone likes to say that white in The Great Gatsby means innocence, probably because 1) that’s 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, she is described as
selfish, careless, and destructive. Does this make the point that even the
purest characters in Gatsby have been corrupted? Did Daisy start off all
innocent and fall along the way, or was there no such purity to begin with? Or,
in some way, does Daisy’s decision to remain with Tom allow her to keep her
innocence? We’ll keep thinking about that one.
Symbolizes purity and innocence
Mostly symbolizes Daisy and Jordan. They are usually wearing white.
- Jordan and Daisy’s girlhood is described as “beautiful white.”
- “They are both in white.”
- “Daisy and Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols
weighing down their own white dresses…”
Daisy
Daisy seems to always be connected to the colour white.
- On the day Daisy kissed Gatsby. “Daisy’s white face came up to his own.”
- “Our beautiful white [girlhood]-”
- “Her face bent into the single wrinkle of the small white neck.”
- “High in a white palace the king’s daughter…”
Childhood represents innocence and because the colour white is associated
with innocence, white becomes a representation of innocence.It makes it seem
that Daisy was innocent when she was younger.
- When Gatsby first knew Daisy, “…she dressed in white, and had a little
white roadster…”
- ”When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster was
beside the curb…”
- ”…November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which they
had driven in her white car.”
Jordan
Jordan is also described with the word white, although not as often as
Daisy.
- “Jordan’s fingers, powdered white over their tan…”
- “Aunt Jordan’s got a white dress too.”
Gatsby
Gatsby is also frequently described with white.
- The steps on Gatsby’s house are white. (It kinda means that on the
outside the house looks innocent but on the inside it is not).
- “On the white steps an obscene word,…”
- “… made a bright sort of colour against the white steps…when I first came
to his ancestral home.”
- When Gatsby wanted to meet Daisy for the first time in 5 years, he wore a
white suit to show that he was good, pure and honest to appease Daisy.
- “…and Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt and gold-coloured
tie…”
- When Gatsby was stopped by the police for speeding.
“Taking a white card from his wallet, he waved it before the man’s eyes…”
Nick
Nick is also usually dressed in white to symbolize his innocence. He
believes that he himself “is the most honest person he knows.”
- “…I am one of the few honest people I have ever known.”
- The first time he went to Gatby’s party he wore white.
- “Dressed up
in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after seven…”
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