Symbolism in The Great Gatsby Essay Example

📌Category: Books, The Great Gatsby
📌Words: 475
📌Pages: 2
📌Published: 12 March 2022

The Great Gatsby has been interpreted as a bleak analysis of the American Dream. The book follows Nick Carraway, a man who recently moved to Long Island, New York, which is split into two neighbourhoods, west egg – where he lives, and east egg. The former housing those with ‘new money’, the latter, ‘old money’ (inherited). Jay Gatsby is his next-door neighbour, a mysterious figure who entertains a lavish lifestyle and constantly throws parties at his massive estate. Even though Gatsby's riches are comparable to those in East Egg, he is unable to enter the ‘distinguished club’ of people born affluent. His endeavour to win Daisy Buchanan (Nick’s friend Tom’s wife), a woman from a well-established aristocratic family, ends in tragedy and, his unfair death.

The symbolism supporting this tale makes it unforgettable. The green light at the end of the Buchanan’s dock which is directly across the bay from Gatsby’s mansion is a recurring image in the novel that appeals to his sense of aspiration. It is a sign of the bright future he so fervently believes in, and it is toward which his arms are extended when Nick first meets him. Nick admires Gatsby for his "extraordinary gift for hope" as well as his "heightened sensitivity to the promises of life." Once Daisy is within Gatsby’s reach, however, the colossal significance of the green light disappears. In essence, the green light is an unattainable promise, one that Nick understands in universal terms at the end of the novel: a future we will never understand, yet are continuously striving towards it.

The valley of ashes, an industrial wasteland located between West Egg and Manhattan, stands in stark contrast to the bright future promised by the green light. It stands as the result of America's post-war economic growth, the harsh truth behind the consumer culture that supports newly wealthy individuals like Gatsby, as a dumping site for the garbage of adjacent manufacturers. The men working there are the underclasses who live in hopelessness while feeding the greed of a booming economy. Notably, it is George Wilson, a man living there, characterized as an "ashen" man, who kills Gatsby, on the premise that he ran over Myrtle, his wife - also Tom’s lover (He didn’t, though he did take the blame for Daisy). Coincidentally, our murderer is also described as an “ashen” man just before he shoots Gatsby. 

Lastly, Doctor Eckleburg's eyes, which appear on an advertising billboard by George Wilson’s garage, hang over the valley of ashes. In the morally void world of The Great Gatsby, these eyes ‘keep watch’ over the valley, and they see some of the novel's most disgusting moments: Tom and Myrtle's affair, Myrtle's death, and the valley itself. However, they are ultimately a product of the age's materialistic society, set up by Doctor Eckleburg to ‘fatten his practice’. Behind them is another individual attempting to amass wealth, and behind him, another, so on and on. As a result, their role as a heavenly entity that observes and judges is finally rendered obsolete, and the story is left without a moral compass.

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