Symbolism In The Great Gatsby

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

Gatsby is a symbolic figure created by James Gatz; an idea of who he wanted to become to please himself and fill his incompleteness. Freud said the symbolic was an “idea of the self that depends on an idea of the loss of the self because we cannot recognize selfhood unless we compare it to its absence” (Parker. 140). James Gatz’ absences come primarily from his low self-esteem, insecurities, and regression.

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.

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.

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.

Gatsby is not misleading, and cares and hopes for the best to every one of the characters he meets. Gatsby progressed in a multitude of ways, such as how he talked and thought of certain people such as Daisy. The way F. Scott Fitzgerald described Gatsby as a character and how he progressed Gatsby couldn't be more fitting as a caring and more respectful kind of guy. How Gatsby relates to society is that he threw parties and how a lot of rich people went to his parties. He may even be able to challenge societal norms because of how he brought himself up to be a kind of character who looks like a rich guy who is just like everyone else, normal, but really he had so much inside of him that Nick Carraway(friend and Narrator) can for some reason only see. Through this journey, some may feel that Fitzgerald wanted to that there is always some sort of light around, maybe you will have to look hard for it but there will always be light, in Gatsby’s case, there was a green light, and how he looked at the light made it seem as it was his hope, but not for loss. As Gatsby says "single green light" and how it was "unattainable dream," the "dream [that] must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it”. This is one of Gatsby’s quotes that he used with a reference to the green light.

Thinking about the past almost always affect present happiness. Perhaps the wrong memories, and sometimes the right memories with someone have negative effects. Many people experience overthinking. This requires someone to sit around and think about something in their life until they begin to over exaggerate the situation. Coming up with every negative outcome that they can acquire. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, The Great Gatsby, there is almost an opposite thinking coming from the main character, the wealthy Jay Gatsby believes that he should find comfort in the past and hope for it to positively affect the present. Through the text Gatsby is taught using symbolism, that it is foolish to attempt to recover the past because it is impossible for it to lead to present happiness.

The green light is the most significant use of symbolism in The Great Gatsby. The green light represents various aspects of life which include: Hope, unattainable dreams, freedom and the American Dream. In chapter one Nick states “Involuntarily I glanced seaward — and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock" (Fitzgerald 152). The explanation of this quote is Nick seeing Gatsby reaching his arms out towards the green light at the end of the deck which represents that Gatsby is trying to grasp and gets a hold of his hopes and dreams, which is Daisy, but at that moment Gatsby is unsuccessful in doing so. The green light’s meaning is also that a person cannot live their lives in the past, but instead should look ahead towards the future. In chapter 9 Nick also states "I thought of Gatsby‘s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy‘s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could barely fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night" (Fitzgerald 149). For Gatsby, the green light represents his American dream and Daisy. He wanted to continue his life with Daisy by his side, but sadly his dreams were short-lived.

One of the symbols that Fitzgerald took advantage of was color. If he made a point to mention or emphasize a specific color in the book, it most likely had meaning to it. One of the main issues in the Great Gatsby was materialism and greed. For example, one character is named Daisy. Her name shows that she is like the flower; white or pure looking on the outside, but yellow and corrupted on the inside. For example, when Gatsby went to war, she wouldn’t wait for him and started to date other men. “Suddenly she was again, keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men,” (Fitzgerald, 151). Then later in the book, Daisy accidentally hit Myrtle with a car. “The ‘death car’ as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then disappeared around the next bend,” (Fitzgerald, 137). However, instead of trying to help out or admit to her mistake, Daisy wouldn’t say anything, letting everyone

One of the most significant examples of symbolism in The Great Gatsby is the Green Light. Appearing at the edge of Daisy’s dock, the color green symbolizes growth and the future, but also envy. The Green

     F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, uses symbolism throughout the novel to create the characters and events of the post World War I period. Colors are one way symbolism was used to develop the characters’ personalities and set up events. This is shown by colors like the green at the end of Daisy Buchannan’s dock, the color of Jay Gatsby’s car and how Myrtle and Jordan surrounded themselves by white. Other symbolisms used to set up events are the difference in the people of the West Egg and East Egg and the sign in the “valley of ashes”.

"Never has symbolism played such a crucial part in the very foundation of a novel as it does in Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, The Great Gatsby." Harold Bloom has written about this book. The author used several types of symbolism in The Great Gatsby. The colours are probably the easiest to be recognized and guessed what they symbolized. According to the definition “symbolism” is "the practice of representing things by means of symbols or of attributing symbolic meanings or significance to objects, events, or relationships."

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.

Symbolism brings depth and meaning to ordinary objects and people. One of the themes of the novel “The Great Gatsby” written by Scott Fitzgerald is the American dream. The American dream connects to all of the symbolism that Fitzgerald uses in one way or another. The symbolism helps to express meaning and emotion, bringing more depth to the characters. The most prominent symbols are the green light, Gatsby’s books, and T.J Eckleburg. The Green light is a symbol for hope in what is to come.

The color green represents wealth, which was a reoccurring obsession with Gatsby. The body of water between them both represents the rift between Gatsby and Daisy’s different lives and backgrounds. Additionally, this is the first instance when Gatsby is reaching out to his hopes and dreams. Gatsby’s dream involves wealth and future marriage with Daisy. It is duly noted that at the end of the first chapter, Nick saw Gatsby and, “could have sworn he was trembling…Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light”(Gatsby 20-21). This personal action represents the longing for economic and material success, almost becoming and obsession. However the readers are able to understand that individuals constantly believe that there is always something better in the world. This green light is also symbolic as nicks observation at the end of the novel “tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther”(Gatsby 171), showing that this dream is all encompassing. Gatsby looking across the water to see the green light has drove himself to high status and astonishing success. The green light not only represents wealth but also the model of the American