Color Symbolism in The Great Gatsby
White
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Daisy
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Jordan
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Symbolizes purity and innocence
o Mostly symbolizes Daisy and Jordan. They are usually wearing white.
o Jordan and Daisy’s girlhood is described as “beautiful white” (26).
 “They are both in white” (14).
 “Daisy and Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols
weighing down their own white dresses…” (121).
Daisy seems to always be connected to the color white.
o On the day Daisy kissed Gatsby. “Daisy’s white face came up to his own”
(118).
o “Our beautiful white [girlhood]” (26).
o “Her face bent into the single wrinkle of the small white neck” (123).
o “High in a white palace the king’s daughter…” (126).
o Childhood represents innocence and because the color white is associated
with innocence, white becomes a representation of innocence. It makes it
seem that Daisy was innocent when she was younger.
 Example: When Gatsby first knew Daisy, “…she dressed in white, and
had a little white roadster…” (81).
 ”When I came opposite her house that morning her white roadster
was beside the curb…”(81).
 ”…November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which
they had driven in her white car” (158).
Jordan is also described with the word white, although not as often as Daisy.
o “Jordan’s fingers, powdered white over their tan…” (121).
o “Aunt Jordan’s got a white dress too” (123).
Gatsby
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Gatsby is also frequently described with white.
o The steps on Gatsby’s house are white. (It means that on the outside the
house looks innocent but on the inside it is not).
 “On the white steps an obscene word,…” (187)
 “… made a bright sort of color against the white steps…when I first
came to his ancestral home” (160).
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.
o “…and Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt and gold-colored tie…” (9091).
When Gatsby was stopped by the police for speeding.
o “Taking a white card from his wallet, he waved it before the man’s eyes…”
(74).
Nick
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Nick is also usually dressed in white to symbolize his innocence. He believes that he
himself “is the most honest person he knows.”
o “…I am one of the few honest people I have ever known” (66).
o The first time he went to Gatsby’s party he wore white.
 “Dressed up in white flannels I went over to his lawn a little after
seven…” (47).
West Egg
 The neighborhood in which Nick and Gatsby live, West Egg, in is often described as
white. He uses white to symbolize that the city looks harmless and innocent but
actually it isn’t since white in the Great Gatsby symbolizes false purity.
o “…I hurried down the white chasms of lower New York…” (62).
o “…so I drove into the West Egg Village in search for her among soggy
whitewashed alleys…” (90).
o “…the sidewalk was white with moonlight” (117).
o “…men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on
which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress” (183).
Yellow & Gold
Symbolizes greed, desire for wealth and ‘old money.’
Corruption is distinctly represented by yellow, but death is also a key to yellow’s dark
symbolism.
Yellow is usually seen around a tragic death.
 Myrtle was killed by Gatsby’s yellow Rolls Royce, in front of her yellow brick house
under the yellow spectacled eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg.
 The yellow color of Gatsby’s car led to his death. If the color of his car was black, like
most of the cars during that time then he wouldn’t have been killed.
 Gatsby is seen walking through ‘yellowing trees’ just before he was murdered.
o “…but he shook his head and in a moment disappeared among the yellowing
trees” (168).
Daisy
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Like her name suggests, is a flower with white petals and a yellow centre. 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.
Daisy is called the ‘golden girl’. Gold is also associated with the color yellow.
o “High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl…” (126).
Jordan
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Jordan’s yellow side can be shown through her hair, which is ‘autumn leaf yellow.’
Jordan can also be seen associated with the color of gold.
o “With Jordan’s slender golden arm resting in mine…” (49).
o “I put my arm around Jordan’s golden shoulder…” (86).
Gatsby
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Is a character that desires wealth.
The first time he meets Daisy after 5 years, he wears a gold necktie.
o “…and Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt and gold-colored tie…” (9091).
o The color yellow appears in Gatsby’s parties. It appears to describe the
wealth of the party.
 “…two girls in twin yellow dresses…” (48). This shows the inhabitants
of West Egg and the wealthy people who attend the parties. In the
parties we can see the people showing their true side and aren’t
wearing white, except for Nick.
 Gatsby is often associated with the color yellow.
 He owned a yellow car
 He gained his fortunes through bootlegging, which exemplifies
the death of the American Dream, which states that money
should be a reward of honesty and hard work.
George Wilson
 Yellow is the color of depravity
 His house is made of yellow brick. It is the only place strictly referred to as yellow.
o “The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick…” (30).
o The house contains individuals Myrtle and George Wilson, who eventually
decided to kill Gatsby on the information presented to him by Tom inside the
house, and he displays depravity when he tells Machaelis that “God sees
everything.”
 “God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing.
You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!” (166)
 He actually believed that the billboard of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg is some
kind of God who could see all the immorality around him. Such as
Mrytle@Mrs. Wilson cheating on her husband and even regrets their
marriage.
 “The only crazy I was when I married him…” (41).
T.J. Eckleburg
 Wilson sees the billboard as something like a God.
 T.J. Eckleburg is wearing yellow glasses, which represents the depravity of his
“godliness.”
Each person who lives in the yellow brick house is corrupt and immoral. The billboard of
T.J. Eckleburg is related to the Wilson’s home, as George views the billboard as a God. Not
surprisingly, T.J. Eckleburg is wearing yellow glasses, representing the depravity of
Eckleburg’s “godliness.” Corruption is distinctly represented by yellow, but death is also a
key to yellow’s dark symbolism.
Green
Represents spring, which is a new beginning or hope. Once also used for envy. [“In the
sunlight his (George Wilson’s) face was green.”]
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.
o 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” (27-28).
Grey
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
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Jordan has grey eyes.
o “Her grey, sun-strained eyes…” (65).
o 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.
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The first time Gatsby and Nick meet, they make a reference to the war saying:
o “We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages in France” (53).
o The villages are seen as sad as they have suffered during the war and can also
be referred to ‘The Valley of Ashes.’
Blue
Represents the dream and is usually connected to Gatsby.
Gatsby
 Blue is also 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.
o “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the
whisperings and the champagne and the stars”(45).
o “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”(188).
o 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.
The Great Gatsby is a novel containing three principal colors – white, yellow, and green –
that are powerfully exercised to represent various aspects of personality and life.
The innocence of the characters, symbolized by the color white, masks their corruption.
The corruption is, in turn, illustrated by the color yellow. Yet, through all of this madness,
deception, and bleakness the color green shines brightly above the others, signifying hope
in the harsh and desolate world of The Great Gatsby.