The Great Gatsby
Color symbolism
“Colors,
like features,
follow the changes
of the emotions”
--Pablo Picasso
Gold
• Richness
• happy or prosperous: golden
days, golden age
• successful: the golden girl
• extremely valuable: a golden
opportunity
Gold
• At Gatsby's parties even the
turkeys turn to gold. "..turkeys
bewitched to a dark gold" (p.
41).
•
Jordan Baker - the golden girl of
golf - is associated with that
color. "With Jordan's slender
golden arm resting in mine" (p.
44); "I put my arm around
Jordan's golden shoulder" (p.
77).
Yellow
• Sometimes the gold at Gatsby's
house turns to yellow
• "now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail
music" (p. 42).
• In contrast to the golden girl Jordan, her
admirers are only yellow. "two girls in twin
yellow dresses"; "»You don't know who we
are,« said one of the girls in yellow, »but we
met you here about a month ago.«" "... we sat
down at a table with the two girls in yellow"
(all p. 44).
• Remarkably Daisy's daughter has old and
yellow hair: "Did mother get powder on your
old yellowy hair?" (p. 111).
Silver
• jewelry and
richness
• In The Great Gatsby the moon or
moonlight or the stars are often
silver:
• "the silver pepper of the stars" (p. 25);
• "The moon had risen higher, and
floating in the Sound was a triangle
of silver scales" (p. 48);
• "A silver curve of the moon hovered
already in the western sky" (p. 114).
White
•
1) morally unblemished
honorable; pure
•
When Nick Caraway visited the Buchanans he met two young
women, of course Daisy and Jordan "They were both in white" (p.
13).
•
Even the windows at Daisy's house are white "The windows were ajar
and gleaming white" (p. 13).
•
"Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white"
(Daisy and Jordan, p. 24).
•
"they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk
was white with moonlight" (Daisy and Gatsby, p. 106).
•
In a El-Greco-like picture at the end of the novel "four solemn men in
dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which
lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress" (p. 167).
•
"His heart beat faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own" (p.
107).
White
• Daisy Fay. She wears white
clothes and has a white car.
•
Fitzgerald uses the color white for
At the end of the novel ["the party was over"
(p. 171), like the end of the Jazz Age at the
Great Depression 1929] somebody soiled
Gatsby's house. "On the white steps an
obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a
piece of brick, stood out clearly in the
moonlight, and I erased it" (p. 171).
Green
• Fitzgerald used it mainly for "not
faded", like in "a green old age",
• or for hope.
•
•
•
•
•
•
This green light is across the sea where
Buchanan's house is supposed to be. Gatsby said:
"»You always have a green light that burns all
night at the end of your dock«" (p. 90);
"Now it was again a green light on a dock" (p. 90);
“
...when he first picked out the green light at the
end of Daisy's dock" (p. 171);
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic
future that year by year recedes before us" (p.
171).
Later the whole water between Gatsby and Daisy
gets green "On the green Sound, stagnant in the
heat,.." (p. 112).
Once (as far as I found it) Fitzgerald used "green"
for envious or jealous: "In the sunlight his face
was green" (George Wilson, p. 117).
Grey
•
•
• is often used for neutral
• dull
"grey little villages in France" (p. 48);
• not important
"The grey windows disappeared" (at
Gatsby's house, p. 91);
• "... a grey, florid man with a hard,
empty face" (p. 97)
• The Wilsons, living in the valley of
ashes, appear in grey, except for
Myrtle, when she enjoys the company
of Tom Buchanan.
• Wilson "mingling immediately with
the cement color of the walls. A white
ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his
pale hair as it veiled everything in the
vicinity – except his wife, who moved
close to Tom" (p. 28).
Blue
• the color of being depressed
• Moody
• unhappy
• Although a lot of people are in and
around his house, his gardens
(plural!) are blue. "... ghostly birds
began to sing among the blue
leaves" (p. 144
• After Myrtle's death George Wilson
and Mr.Michaelis are in a blue
mood. " ... a blue quickening by the
window, and realized that dawn
wasn't far off. About five o'clock it
was blue enough outside to snap off
the light" (p. 151).
• The most unhappy place is the
graveyard: "He had come a long way
to this blue lawn" (Carraway at
Gatsby's grave, p. 171).
Pink
• Sometimes Gatsby comes up in the
color pink. "the luminosity of his
pink suit under the moon"
(Gatsby, p.136).
• When Gatsby and Daisy are finally
together, "there was a pink and
golden billow of foamy clouds
above the sea" (p. 91).
Red
•
•
•
•
•
Alive
Joy
Love
Shame
rage
• The inside of
Buchanan's home is in
red. "We walked
through a high hallway
into a bright rosycolored space" (p. 13);
• "Inside, the crimson
room bloomed with
light" (p. 22).
Light
• Light colors represent dreams or
goals
• Gatsby follows the pure light of the
grail
•
Gatsby is reintroduced to Daisy on a
dewy bright morning.
Dark
• The Valley of Ashes is the stark opposition to East
and West Egg
• Dark colors are the realities
of Gatsby's dream-like life.
All of Gatsby's parties are held at night and are
bright with a false light.