Colors in The Great Gatsby Essay Example

Throughout The Great Gatsby  colors such as green, yellow, gray, red, and white are all used to show the emotion of characters or to furthermore help explain a topic. Moreover, the color gray could be used to show an abundance of different emotions. Including death, dullness, somber, dirtiness, and many others. In The Great Gatsby the color gray is used to show the lower class, depression, and loss. 

The first way that gray is used in The Great Gatsby is to show the lower class. The Valley of Ashes is a place in The Great Gatsby where the ones who never achieved the American dream are left to live in poverty. This quote helps show the lower class, “Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operation from your sight” (Fitzgerald 27). It is definitely visible that seeing the men covered in the gray ash helps show the poverty that is happening in the Valley of Ashes. All of the descriptive words like the impenetrable cloud and the obscure operation of sight represent these people's life as the lower class. 

Gray is also used to show depression throughout The Great Gatsby. In The Great Gatsby the author manipulates the weather to show the emotions of the characters more thoroughly. Fitzgerald does this with this quote,“The rain was still falling, but the darkness had parted in the west, and there was a pink and golden billow of foamy clouds above the sea” (Fitzgerald 99). As seen in the book Gatsby has been depressed for an exceptionally long time, this is due to not having Daisy anymore. On top of that Fitzgerald then adds to that when the weather magically turns from gray to brighter colors, to help represent the emotions Gatsby feels at different times. 

The final way gray is shown in The Great Gatsby is through loss. The day of Gatsby’s funeral the weather took a turn and it started raining and it was dark. Loss is shown here,“When I left his office the sky turned dark and I got back to West Egg in a drizzle” (Fitzgerald 180). This furthermore explains that the color gray is shown through the dark and gloomy weather. It was a day of loss and the weather showed the emotion Nick, Mr. Gatz, and the owl eyed glasses character felt as they stood there being the only ones who cared enough to show up. 

The color gray is used countless ways in The Great Gatsby. It is noticed when you have the death of Gatsby. As well as the depression of Gatsby when Fitzgerald manipulates the weather. Along with the representation of the Valley of Ashes and the lower class lifestyle.