the great gatsby color symbolism. colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --pablo...

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The Great Gatsby Color symbolism

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Page 1: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

The Great GatsbyColor symbolism

Page 2: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

 

“Colors,

like features,

follow the changes

of the emotions”--Pablo Picasso

Page 3: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

GoldGold• Richness

• happy or prosperous: golden days, golden age

• successful: the golden girl

• extremely valuable: a golden opportunity

Page 4: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

GoldGold• 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).

Page 5: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

YellowYellow• 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).

Page 6: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

SilverSilver

• 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).

Page 7: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

WhitWhitee• 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).

Page 8: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

WhiteWhite• 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).

• Daisy Fay. She wears white clothes and has a white car.

Page 9: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

GreenGreen • 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).

Page 10: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

GreyGrey • is often used for neutral

• dull• not important

• "grey little villages in France" (p. 48);

• "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).

Page 11: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

BlueBlue• the color of being the color of being

depresseddepressed• MoodyMoody• unhappyunhappy

• 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).

Page 12: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

PinkPink • 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).

Page 13: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

RedRed• Alive• Joy• Love• Sham

e• rage

• The inside of Buchanan's home is in red. "We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space" (p. 13);

• "Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light" (p. 22).

Page 14: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

LightLight• Light colors represent

dreams or goals

• Gatsby follows the pure light of the grail

•Gatsby is reintroduced to Daisy on a dewy bright morning.

Page 15: The Great Gatsby Color symbolism. Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions --Pablo Picasso

DarkDark• Dark colors are

the realities of Gatsby's dream-like life.

• The Valley of Ashes is the stark opposition to East and West Egg

All of Gatsby's parties are held at night and are bright with a false light.