4A+Symbols,+Topic+&+Themes

" In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”


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The color blue in The Great Gatsby is associated with false appearances. False appearance plays a vital role in the novel in several key places. The first appearance of the color blue occurs at the description of Gatsby's lavish party held at his mansion. Until this point, Gatsby’s parties were believed to be high class occasions where friends of Gatsby came because there was no evidence to say this was untrue. However, in the middle of the sentence, this belief is changed when the party guests are described as “moths”, only coming for the alcohol. The significance of the discovery surrounding the guests is that blue, the color of the garden, represents the illusion that the guests are friends of Gatsby.====== 

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Another significant evidence that blue represents false illusion of Wilson's blue eyes, and this shows that he believes Myrtle is faithful, when she is This is significant because he believes Myrtle is faithful. Through his blue eyes, he sees a false image of what is happening in reality. The color blue is also associated with Wilson occurs after Myrtle dies and the change he noticed indicates that Myrtle was cheating on him.======

__Decay/Paralysis:__ "Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground." (24) - This quote is about the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. The description of the Valley of Ashes is one that truly reflects then down and under of New York. Through this description, Fitzgerald critiques how the glamour will experience decay, as everyone foolishly throws themselves into the pursuit of the distorted American Dream.
 * Dion**

"The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn't any use. Nobody came" (174) - This scene exemplifies the paralysis of the roaring twenties society. Even though many turned up for Gatsby's parties, no one attended his funeral. Despite looking wealthy, glamourous, in-the-spotlight for the later part of his life, when it ends, he was not remembered. This is no doubt a sad scene for any man.

"In the ditch beside the road, right side up, but violently shorn of one wheel rested a new coupe which had left Gatsby's drive not two minutes before, The sharp jut of a wall accounted for the detachment of the wheel" (53) - In this scene, after the first Gatsby party Nick attend, he see this scene where people who got drunk from the party rammed their car into the ditched. This adds on to the negative effects of the pursuit of wealth, and fame Fitzgerald wishes to portray.

"There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan's mistress." (28) - This quote takes place in Chapter Two when Nick is introduced to Myrtle, Tom's mistress. Performance of adultry in Great Gatsby is rather common and this shows the lack of morals and values people in both East and West Egg have. Adultry is present with Nick as well since he does have a relationship back in the Mid West, yet at the same time he's dated other girls and also Jordan Baker. Daisy too, has an affair with Gatsby when she meets him through Nick. Adultry have become so common throughout the book that it is no longer atrocious when readers hear about it.
 * Connie**

"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 togther, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...." (188) - In the last chapter of the book when Nick conversed with Tom about Gatsby's death due to Myrtle's death, Nick made this comment about the Buchanan's. Although this is merely Nick's judgement of them, it is to some extent true. It greatly reflects the stereotypical rich people in the 1920s where money could buy them security, power, and convinience. Redemption to mistakes they have made could be "bought"; using people to have things done their way was just a snap away.

"His shirts piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high... While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher-shirts with stirpes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue." (97-98) - Moral values have decayed; your character didn't define who you are or how people think of you. Instead, your physical appearance and the stuff you have told everyone how rich or powerful you were defines you. Gatsby has a cabinet full of shirts of all sorts of patterns, he doesn't even actually need that many clothes, it's just purely a way of showing off. - Moral values disappear, replaced by conspicuous consumption (materialism)
 * Jeffrey**

"I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation might have been one of the crises of my life. But because the offer was obviously and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no choice except to cut him off there." (88) - By Chapter 5, Nick already knows that it was just a matter of time that Gatsby would ask him to introduce him to his cousin, Daisy. Gatsby offers a business proposal to Nick as a way of showing his appreciation to the favor he is going to ask. In a way, we can see this gesture as Gatsby be trying to bribe Nick into helping him. In the Jazz Age, alcohol was banned from America, so Gatsby's gesture could be a reference to the bootleggers bribing governement officials to 'close an eye' or look the other way while illegal trade went on. Gatsby wrongly assumed that Nick was the type of person who cared about money, instead of extending his friendship to Nick he chooses to bribe him.

"I even had a short affair with a girl who lived in Jersey City and worked in the accounting department." (61) "I drew up the girl beside me tightening my arms. Her wan scornful mouth smiled and so I drew her up again, closer, this time to my face." (85) "I knew that firsrt I had to get myself definitely out of that tangle back home. I'd been writing letters once a week and signing them 'Love, Nick.'" - At the end of Chapter 3, Nick says that he is one of the few honest people that he has ever known. These three quotes contradict his confession, he is having a relationship with 3 women at the same time. While trying to maintain his long term relationship with his girlfriend from his hometown, he dates a girl working at the accounting department of his bonds firm and gets romantically involved with Jordan Baker. An idea that Fitzgerald is constantly remind readers of is the decay of the American Dream and the loss of moral values. Nick still thinks he is honest, even though he's been cheating on his girlfriend. Which brings out the point of paralysis, people have lost all humility and do things based on what's good for them instead of their consciences.

__Illusion:__ Anika: 1. Quote: (pg98) "If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay," said Gatsby. "You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock." This is when Gatbsy realizes that Daisy is so close to him now, she is no longer the "dream" and that the significane of the green light is gone. The mist provides a sort of 'illusion' mood, covering the green light at that moment when Daisy is part of his actual reality..or maybe it provides a sort of contradiction to illusion..? 2. Quote: (pg 49-50) "He waved his hand toward the book-shelves. "About that. As a matter of fact you needn't bother to ascertain. I ascertained. They're real." "The books?" He nodded. "Absolutely real-have pages and everything. I thought they'd be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact they're absolutely real. Pages and---Here! Lemme show you.".....it goes on.. Illusion plays on the scene with the display of the library full of books... Gatbys money(wealth), decendence, education, relationship with daisy is all an illusion..We never REALLY know what is the truth, and what he just didn't tell Nick Carraway.


 * Dylan**:Here are some more illusions...
 * //1. Family background://** In Chapter four Gatsby says to Nick, "I'll tell you God's truth...I am the son of some wealthy people in the middle-west." The actual truth about Gatsby's or James Gatz's past are revealed in Chapter 6 and Gatsby himself reveals the truth about his past to Nick.
 * //2. His wealth://** In Chapter two Mr. McKee says that he had attended one of Gatsby's parties and adds: "Well they say he's a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's where all his money comes from." In Chapter 6 Gatsby reveals to Nick that "it was from Cody that he inherited money-a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars."
 * //3. Oxford education://** In Chapter 4 Gatsby tells Nick that he was educated at Oxford. In Chapter 7 however Gatsby reveals the truth to Tom that he stayed only five months there and "that's why I can't really call myself an Oxford man."
 * //4. Proximity to Daisy://** In Ch.4 Jordan Baker tells Nick that "Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay." In Ch.5 after Gatsby had shown Daisy around his house and after Daisy had put her arm though his he realises the vast distance actually separating him and Daisy: "It had seemed as close as a star to the moon."
 * //5.Daisy's love for Gatsby://** At the end of Ch7 the reality is that Daisy loves Tom and the illusion that Daisy loved Gatsby is shattered.

Light:

Yellow:

Green: Shay 1.: "As I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock" 180 "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes us." 80 Blue: Blue is the color of water and there are a lot of references to seas, rivers and different kinds of bodies of water. - "Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound." (4-5) - This is a description of the East and West "eggs". From the description you can see that the two eggs are surrounded by bodies of water. - "Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans." (5) - Once again, it shows how much of the two lands are surrounded by water. I think that the water, or the blue, represents the clear minds in the novel. Everyone has a flaw, including the narrator, and I think the waters are the one thing that are not corrupted and are holding the society up and helping it function. - "The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic -- their retinas are one yard high." (23) - Doctor T.J. Eckleburg has always acted as a sort of judging eye in the novel and I think his blue eyes represented the purity, or the justice in the world. - "It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars." (43) - One of Gatsby's guests tore her dress and Gatsby sent her a new evening gown as a good deed. Since the color of the dress is blue, I think blue is the color of presents, or kindness. Overall, I think blue is a representative of good things in the book. I thought blue was going to be gloomy and sad but all the references to it suggested otherwise. It represents justice, purity, kindness, etc. Blue is the little bit of hope in Fitzgerald's corrupted society that showed that not everyone is flawed.

__**Time:**__ Anna Kargl: 1. “Nobody’s coming to tea. It’s too late!” He looked at his watch as if there was some pressing demand on his time elsewhere. “I can’t wait all day” (Gatsby) “Don’t be silly; it’s just two minutes to four.” (Nick) pg.90 - I found it a little funny that even though Gatsby has spent all these years waiting for Daisy and even pushed the actual reunion day back a week further when he asked Nick to arrange it, that he acts all impatient even though it isn’t even the right time for her to come yet. 2. “I’m sorry about the clock,” he said…. “It’s an old clock,” I told them idiotically. I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor. pg.92 - This quote shows that in a way that during the reunion between Gatsby and Daisy, time stands still almost as if it was a dream. In a way, it also shows how for Gatsby all this time that he has spent waiting for Daisy has become irrelevant. 3. “Can’t repeat the past?” He cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!” He looked around him wildly, as if the past was lurking here in the shadows of his house, just out of reach of his hand. pg.116 -This quote really depicts how Gatsby cannot let go of the past he has with Daisy and honestly believes that those five years that they have spent apart will just disappear. 4. “What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon,” cried Daisy, “and the day after that, and the next thirty years?” pg.125 -Although she is rich and has all the opportunities in the world, Daisy does not know what to do with all the time that she has. It almost seems like time is not important for her.

(Time) **Charlotte:** "Well, this would interest you. It wouldn't take up much of your time and you might pick up a nice bit of money." (Pg 83) - It is interesting that Gatsby offers Nick a job where he would make a lot of money in very little time. Fitzgerald is, once again, trying to show the reader that money is a very big of Gatsby's and the rest of west egg and east egg's world. But off course they need time to party and socialize, so making the money mustn't take too much time. Nick respectfully declines because he is very aware that the business Gatsby wants him to work for is involved in illegal alcohol trafficking. With this, I personally think, Fitzgerald is trying to show the reader that even though Nick is a judgmental reader, he does try hard to do the right thing. "'Nobody's coming to tea. It's too late!' ... 'Don't be silly; it's just two minutes to four'" - Gatsby has waited 5 years for Daisy, but now he can't hold on a couple of minutes, maybe a half hour? Fitzgerald wants the reader to understand what Gatsby is feeling. To feel compassion for him. He spent all this time trying to win her back, making Nick's house presentable, and he going insane. Gatsby thinks she is late because she isn't coming. This is quite the change from Gatsby's usual character. Usually he is quite calm and relaxed, this is the first time we really see him "freak out" about something. "... It came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then disappeared around the next bend." - When Daisy kills Myrtle, she doesn't even stop for more than a second. Fitzgerald wants her not to stop because it emphasizes the fact that she doesn't care about Myrtle, she cares about what will happen to her if she gets caught. Gatsby doesn't try to stop her because he knows what will happen if people know it was her. The fact that she didn't even stop to see if Myrtle was okay is very significant because Fitzgerald wants it to portray certain images about her personality. If she had gotten out to check on Myrtle, Daisy would seem like a completely different person.

"Filled with faces dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now and forever" (pg 70) -This quote is from the passage when Rosy gets shot outside the restaurant. It explains how he along with time have gone and will never come back. "We haven't met for many years... Five years next November" -Nick invited both Daisy and Gatsby over for tea, first time they meet after 5 years. "He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that time had gone into love Daisy" (Pg. 110) -Nick describes how Gatsby is focused on the past because of his "love" with Daisy, and he's trying to recover that past by building his future.
 * INAKI**