What Does Music Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

Yellow Cocktail Music: The Use of Color in The Great Gatsby The Jazz Age of the 1920’s was a fast-paced, lovedrunk decade. It was colored with all forms of art, from music and literature to sex and war. The American Dream first emerged during this time, or rather, a new and materialistic version of it emerged. Everyone wanted to drink from a fountain of youth and eat from a feast of good fortune and wealth, and the pursuit of this lead to the ultimate downfall of American society in the year 1929. Nobody seemed to understand this better than F. Scott Fitzgerald, and no book illustrated this concept of American greed better than The Great Gatsby. To get to the core of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s thoughts on the American Dream and the way he explores it within The Great Gatsby, one must analyze the creative ways in which Fitzgerald uses traditional color symbolism to show us how the nature of humanity and the harshness of reality tampers with our dreams to ultimately turn them into something repulsive and broken. There are three colors that held the most symbolic power within the novel: white, green, and gold. Fitzgerald takes a very unique approach with his use of white. In The Great Gatsby, white is a symbol of purity and morality, as with Daisy and Jordan’s dresses when they are first introduced in the novel: “[Daisy and Jordan] were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house.”(8) Fitzgerald describes them almost as if they themselves are angels, perfect beings blessing the earth with their very breath. However, he does so very strategically. As one reads further into the novel, one finds that Daisy is a greedy adulterer and Jordan is a manipulative, arrogant liar. When Fitzgerald describes something as white, that thing is typically pure, even Godly on the surface, but flawed and broken beneath. We see this use of white again when Nick wears white flannel to his first party at Gatsby’s (41), and again when Fitzgerald writes, “An hour later the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby, in a white flannel suit...hurried in.”(84) Gatsby has tried to mold himself into the perfect man. At the beginning of the novel, it appears that he may be just that— perfect. But beneath the white suit, he is a liar, a bootlegger, and a money-hungry man who is having an affair with a married woman because of his relentless hope of reconstructing the past. The use of green in the novel is just as unique. Green is usually used in the novel to describe the light at the end of Daisy and Tom Buchanan’s dock. Fitzgerald writes, “[Gatsby] stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way… I glanced seaward-- and distinguished nothing except a single green light.” (20-21) One might think of green as a color to represent new beginnings. The green light seems to represent a new beginning for Gatsby. That light resurfaces at many points throughout the story. The quote that best illustrates the importance of the green light to Gatsby appears on page 180, at the very end of the novel. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.” Although the green light may be seen as …show more content…
Not just with colors, but with objects and even certain people as well. However, the various hues and combinations of color bring the most depth and complexity to the novel. This symbolism may even uncover things about Fitzgerald’s thoughts and opinions about American life that may otherwise have gone unexamined due to the complex and double-sided ways in which he used it. The use of the color white denotes perfection and pristineness while it also represents imperfection and corruption. The use of green represents ambition, while also illustrating the tumultuous flaws within Gatsby that fuel this ambition. Fitzgerald’s use of gold and yellow are perhaps the most important symbols in the novel, representing not only the American Dream, but also the ways in which the American Dream hurts the very foundation of American