2A+Symbols,+Topics,+&+Themes

blue: pg.90 "A damp streak of hair lay like a dash of blue paint across her cheek and her hand was wet with glistening drops as I helped her from the car." The color blue also appears throughout the novel, when describing the color of most of Nick's suits or ties. To me blue represents the Mid West, where Nick is from. Daisy being his cousin, however adopting the life of many of the elite in East egg, still has a "dash" of the Mid West in her background. Pg. 27 the eyes of T.J Eckleburg pg.29 "When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes." It is important to note that T.J Eckleburg and Mr. Wilson both share the fact that they have blue eyes, whereas the other character's in the novel don't share this similarity. Blue eyes are known for having depth. This could mean that blue eyes represent the opposite of the superficialness of the rich, and instead these eyes see the plight of the poor and the reality that the "American dream" has become a dream without any depth that the rich don't want to see. White: ****pg.12 "They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering" Fitzgerald uses a lot of contradictions in this novel and I think the color white is one of them. White is often used to symbolize purity. Daisy and Jordan are not considered " pure" and innocent. When talking to Jordan a lot of the characters use the word "rotten" around her. She is not innocent, since she lies to get what she wants. Daisy ends up having an affair with Gatsby.**  **pink: Nick describes Gastby's suit of being colored pink. I think pink is a good color to describe Gatsby since it gives of a dreamy persona. Pink is also used to describe romance, and Gatsby is a true believer in love since he is unable to let go of Daisy after five years and he truly believes she is the only one for him. When describing Gatsby, Nick sets him apart from everyone else and in a way the pink suit validates this since no other character is described wearing this color.**  The green light is significant to Gatsby. It represents hope and Love. Hope that Daisy might one day notice him again, and that she may one day be with him. It also represents the past, and how after five years, Gatsby cannot let go of the love he had for Daisy.**
 * Aileen: Colors
 * green: pg. 26 chapter 1. " I glanced seaward- and distinguishing nothing but a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of the dock."

** Lancelot **: //“Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven – a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterwards savors of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy – even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach – but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away; for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.// //Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.” (Ch.1 pg. 6)// -Without this huge amount of money that he got from his family, he could have been successful, not just in terms of wealth, but actual success from dedicating himself in football. But with the wealth that he inherits, he trashes the football career that he could have gotten. He lives aimlessly, drifting from one spot to another where wealthy people gather. This is a decay of the American Dream in a few ways. First, they were supposed to work hard to get money, but Tom gets it easily from his family. Second, they were supposed to live a nice life after obtaining a certain amount of wealth, not like Tom who uses his money on meaningless things, and being still unsatisfied with what he has.

//“And on Monday eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.” (Ch.3 pg. 39)// -Supposedly, people had to work hard to earn money and have a nice life. However, Gatsby gets his money easily from bootlegging and the practices conspicuous consumption by holding these extravagant parties. After these parties, he doesn’t take care of what is left over, but uses his money to make other people work hard for him. Throughout the process, he didn’t use any effort and got all he wanted, which is contradicting to the American Dream.

//“This is a valley of ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.” (Ch.2 pg. 23)// -The Valley of Ashes is a visual representation, and a symbol for the decay of the American Dream. To my opinion, I think that these ashes that Fitzgerald talks about are the “corruptions” that are present in the society, how these corruptions “:grow like wheat”, implying that corruption spreads fast. What Fitzgerald is trying to say is that all the “houses and chimneys and rising smoke” and made from corruption. We obtain these luxuries through corruption and that in the end, the we become one with corruption – “finally, with a transcendent effort, of men”

//“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…” (Ch. 9 pg 179)// -The money, was supposed to make life better for the people. But here, money is used to “cover” up people’s flaws and that because of money, Tom and Daisy were “allowed” to do what they want to do not caring about the consequence.


 * Charlotte (MORE DECAY)...

Some more things to add about decay:** Fitzegerald cleverly represents his views about the decay of the American Dream and of moral decay throughout the whole novel. One of the main aspects he uses to show moral decay in particular is the **Valley of Ashes**. This desolate and gray area of land, which lies halfway between West Egg and New York, shows the huge gap present between the rich society and the poorer one. It portrays the social decay and the decay of morality which resulted from the ignorance of the rich (the poor are now covered in ashes, as if they are forgotten). A quote which proves Fitzgerald's use of the Valley of the Ashes to show decay is the following:

" About half way between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air." (Fitzgerald Chapter 2)

 The vocabulary used (desolate, gray, grotesque) implicates negative feelings which gives off a sense of decay (because decay is associated with negativity). This description also opposes that of the bright and lively East and West Egg, which gives evidence for the huge gap between different societies mentioned earlier.

Another quote which shows this decay is this one:

"At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden." (THERE IS MUCH MORE TO THIS QUOTE BUT ITS TOO LONG TO PASTE ON HERE... MORE ABOUT WORKERS)...(Fitzgerald Chapter 3)  Although this is more farfetched, this quote shows decay especially when compared to Gatsby's lifestyle. The caterers and waiters work much harder than Gatsby, yet they're less well of, financially, then Gatsby, who earned his money unlawfully. He's a criminal, yet he has more than the honest caterers who are actually taking part of the American Dream. They're doing their best, which should grant them happiness and wealth, yet it doesn't, instead Gatsby and Tom as well get that happiness. This clearly shows the decline of the American Dream.

I couldn't find a good third quote to support decay, so I analyzed Gatsby some more and went in depth with his connection to the decline of the American Dream:

The decay of the **American Dream** is represented through the characters in the novel. Originally, the American dream was about the pursuit of happiness, you will live a happy life if you live an honest one and work as hard as you can, so summed up: do your best, but do it honestly. The corruption or decay of this is shown particularly well through Gatsby, who tried to buy his happiness through illegal business. He went into bootlegging when the reason he couldn't get what made him most happy (Daisy) was the difference in their social status and material prosperity. Gatsby wasn't yet part of the higher, upper class, and so it wasn't fit for him to be with Daisy, who's at the top of the upper class! This whole idea of happiness being barricaded by social and financial differences completely opposes what the American Dream suggests, and it's through this smart representation that Fitzgerald displays this general depletion of the American Dreams in the 1920's.

 The ideas that illusion embodies in __The Great Gatsby__ include the American society's perception of high society life, the roles characters in it portray, and advertisements that promote untrue things. Allusions to the Bible, celebrity scandals, and inner pre-judgments are shown through Nick's perspective throughout the book. This is significant in that the Great Gatsby is only as great as he invents himself to be; he is not actually a high class member of society in that he did not inherit his wealth and he still has to work to make sure his income is consistent. In fact, his entire scheme to be rich is an illusion to get Daisy's attention.
 * Brenda: Illusion!**

Gatsby himself- “I’m Gatsby,” he said suddenly. “What!” I exclaimed. “Oh, I beg your pardon.” “I thought you knew, old sport. I’m afraid I’m not a very good host.” He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those ** rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance ** in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or ** seemed to face ** —the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on //you// with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. ** Precisely at that point it vanished—and I was looking at an elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty **, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care. …I had ** expected ** that Mr. Gatsby would be a florid and corpulent person in his middle years.” –page 48

I remember I thought Gatsby was a magician—he manages to invite so many people to his parties and has so many connections yet he manages to maintain such a mysterious allure all throughout the book. Nick captures Gatsby’s perfect smile that pushes its way into understanding a person and drawing them into empathizing with him. Yet he also acknowledges that this smile disappears and you see through the illusion to who Gatsby actually is—“an elegant young roughneck” who did not meet Nick’s original conception of who he might be.

Jordan Baker- “For a while I lost sight of Jordan Baker, and then in midsummer I found her again. At first I was flattered to go places with her, because she was a golf champion, and every one knew her name. Then it was something more. I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of **tender curiosity**. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something— ** most affectations conceal something eventually **, even though they don’t in the beginning—and one day I found what it was. When we were on a house-party together up in Warwick, she left a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down, and then lied about it—and suddenly I remembered the story about her that had eluded me that night at Daisy’s. At her first big golf tournament there was a row that nearly reached the newspapers—a suggestion that she had moved her ball from a bad lie in the semi-final round. The thing approached the proportions of a scandal—then died away. A caddy retracted his statement, and the only other witness admitted that he might have been mistaken. The incident and the name had remained together in my mind.

Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because ** she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible **. She was ** incurably dishonest **. She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body.

It made no difference to me. **Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply** —I was casually sorry, and then I forgot.” –pages 57-58

The tender curiosity draws Nick deeper into investigating the illusion of Jordan Baker. Dishonesty is associated with her within the novel and Nick points it out, but still allows it as “a thing you never blame deeply” proving it was not a flag against his personal moral code. He realizes that she was concealing something which was her dishonesty and the shady scandal that his mind first drew up when he heard Jordan Baker’s name. The illusion of a woman Nick potentially has a fling with fools him in that he can excuse a thing such as lying when he himself claims to be “one of the few honest people” that he has ever known (59).

Gatsby's possessions- "And inside, as we wandered through Marie Antoinette music-rooms and Restoration salons, I felt that there were guests **concealed** behind every couch and table, under orders to be breathlessly silent until we had passed through. As Gatsby closed the door of "the Merton College Library" I could have sworn I heard the owl-eyed man break into ** ghostly ** laughter... He hadn't once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, ** as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real ** ." page 91

The importance in this quote included the word "concealed" which is a concept of an illusion-to hide something and trick you into thinking its something else. Gatsby's illusion is so powerful that when Nick visits his house he half-expects participants in the grand parties to appear and finds it hard to believe the house without those characters there to complete his image of Gatsby's mansion. There was also a reference to "ghostly" which implies unrealistic aspects to describe the owl-eyed man and ties into how its a part of an ensemble to make up Gatsby's image. Gatsby himself feels like his house is an illusion as he has to take a new look at everything and his absorption of her presence leads him to question if anything in his house was reality and preceded to move in a dream-like state.

The Eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleburg as God- “Wilson’s glazes eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small gray clouds took on fantastic shapes and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind. “I spoke to her,” he muttered, after a long silence. “I told her s**he might fool me but she couldn’t fool God** **.** I took her to the window”—with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it—“and I said ‘ ** God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God! ** ” Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale an enormous, from the dissolving night. “ ** God sees everything ** ,” repeated Wilson. “That’s an advertisement,” Michaelis assured him.” -pages 159-160

The concept of advertisements is to create an illusion that something is so good that you must have it; that something is being sold to you that you cannot be without. It’s interesting that, advertising, with its lack of censorship in the 1920s, had such a great impact upon the life of George Wilson to the extent that he worshiped it. Fitzgerald sets up the situation in that Wilson is so consumed with grief over his wife’s death that, in his haze of confusion, he mistakes a pair of eyes for the Holy Being up above. His neighbor, Michaelis, sees through this illusion and reassures Wilson that it is merely an advertisement. Wilson’s paranoia about his wife’s doings shines through in his repetition of him telling his wife how God cannot be tricked by her even though he can. This is also paradoxical in that he has been tricked by Myrtle and her affair whereas one may say the hand of God struck her down as Daisy did not even know Myrtle was her husband’s mistress.

Illusions not only represent the high class societal life, but also Nick's own life as he becomes a victim to Conspicuous Consumption.
 * Joel**:

To Daisy - " 'You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,' I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. 'Can't you talk about crops or something?' " (pg. 17 new book) Here we see Nick trying to become a "high-class" member of society. As he engages in conversation with Daisy, he realizes the illusion of the good fun life of the wealthy; however in reality, they spend most of their time loitering around doing boring things. Daisy's whole life is a facade of broken dreams and hopes that life will be better. After marrying Tom, Daisy had to put on a fake face to hide her true feelings on life. Only in certain situations does Daisy opens her heart. In example when Daisy's child is born she says, "I hope she will become a beautiful stupid girl."

Gatsby's Life - "Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!" In the five year hiastus, Gatsby only lived to meet Daisy and get her to fall in love with him. Gatsby's entire life is an illusion, from his broken hopes and dreams to his facade of wealth. As Gatsby states that he wants to repeat the past, Nick knows Gatsby can't because Daisy's life is an illusion as well. She lives in a flase world that she believes to have power in. Because of her false life, Gatsby's hopes and dreams are therefore illusions as well.

__** TIME **__ andrea: The word ‘time’ is mentioned 450 times in the novel. Time is a major theme in The Great Gatsby as it introduces Gatsby as someone who can’t let go of his past. We know that Gatsby works hard to reach his goals (gets rich and lives on west egg just like he dreamed of) and romanticizes his past (with Daisy before the war), which makes the readers suspect that his love for Daisy is not pure, but that it is related to his issue with time. This contradicts with the American Dream, which is about forgetting your past and looking into the future.

// “I wouldn’t ask too much of her. You can’t repeat the past.” // // “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!” (Chapter VI, p. 110) // Gatsby sincerely believes that he can get Daisy back; that she will tell Tom that she never loved him and then marry Gatsby and spend the rest of her life with him instead. Because that was their dream and plan five years ago, Gatsby doesn’t see why this can’t happen now. Clearly, he is blinded by the situation and is so obsessed with reliving his past that he can’t see reality.

// “Luckily the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers and set it back in place.” (Chapter V, p. 86) // As Gatsby and Daisy meet again after five years, he leans back against an old clock hanging on the wall in Nick’s house. (Maybe putting too much pressure on the clock, time)The clock almost falls down and breaks but Gatsby manages to catch it before it falls. This symbolizes that you shouldn’t mess with time (your past), while it at the same time foreshadows that the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy won’t work out. // “Come on, we’re late. We’ve got to go. Tell him we couldn’t wait, will you?” (Chapter VI, p.103) // In this scene, Gatsby gets in invited for dinner by a woman, but doesn’t understand that her husband doesn’t want him to join. Gatsby goes to get his coat, but as he is ready to leave, the couple already left without him. This clearly alludes to Gatsby loosing Daisy because she couldn’t wait for him any longer.


 * Spencer (continuation on time)**

“In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year....Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.” (pg 11) I think this quote is very cleaver because Daisy is talking about this specific day that she wants to remember, however, she never does. I also think that this revolves around Gatsby, and highlights the fact that while Daisy is missing important days such as the longest day, I believe Gatsby remembers them. Gatsby never forgets the important days because I think they revolve around Daisy in his past, that these special memories he will never forget.

“I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.” (pg 46) This quote to me seems a bit funny but odd, because to be drunk for a week I think is not very healthy and almost impossible. And I also believe that if this man (Owl Eyes) is drunk, how does he know it has been a week when in fact it may only be a day or two? I think that Fitzgerald put this quote in from an unintelligent character (which is a paradox because it comes from Owl Eyes and owl’s are wise) to show that it is contributing to the fact that Gatsby feels like he has been away from Daisy for so long, that he too has lost track of time. Although Gatsby knows it has been a while since he has seen Daisy, he still feels as if yesterday he and Daisy were back in Louisville and in love. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (pg 180)

This is the last sentence in the novel, right after Nick is connecting the lights on Daisy’s house, to the Dutch sailors that were traveling to the new frontier and used the lights on land as their hope, and dream to reach. I believe that it summarizes the novel and how we all continue on with troubles, and we move closer to the future, but we still look back at the past and what it means, just like as Gatsby had done. This resembles time because Gatsby always lived his life, thinking of the past and about Daisy, showing that although he was living the present, what kept him going was the past.

Teddy (Additional Continuation on Time) "Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the mantelpiece in a strained counterfeir of perfect ease, even of boredom. His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position his distraught eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sitting, frightened but graceful, on the edge of a stiff chair." (pg 86, Chapter V)

This is one of the significant moments when Gatsby met Daisy once again after their first encounter five years ago. "A defunct mantelpiece clock" conveys a sense of stillness - it looks like the time stopped because of Gatsby and Daisy's romantic encounter. As shown in this passage, Fitzgerald uses time as an element that enhances the sense of romance between two characters.

"He [Gastsby] talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was..." (pg 110, Chapter VI)

This passage directly reveals that Gatsby is a character of contradiction: He implements his American Dream, which is usually a preparation for the future, in order to repossess the pastoral images of Daisy he obtained five years ago. Since he wanted to recover "some idea of himself", which is the very pastoral image of Daisy, Gastby made his life "confused and disordered".

"On the last fly-leaf was printed the word SCHEDULE and the date September 12, 1906." (pg 173, Chapter IX)

This is the copy of schedule that Gastby planned for himself even before he encountered with Daisy. As readers may simply realize, the schedule is highly organized and is full of "resolves" of good will. Such clear time management shows the pure essence of a boy's American Dream. Then Fitzgerald utilizes time once again - by revealing the difference between Gatsby in the past and Gatsby in the end. The change features a great irony, which enhances the horrendous effect of a Decayed American Dream such as that of Gatsby.

