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Essay / Color Symbolism in The Great Gatsby - 459
There are several colors used for symbolism in the novel “The Great Gatsby”. For example, the colors BLUE, GREEN, WHITE, and YELLOW are used throughout the book. The first time Nick Carraway met his cousin Daisy Buchanan at Tom and Daisy, she was dressed entirely in white. Likewise, the house and its furniture are also given in light tones. This fact could be interpreted as: beauty, cleanliness, wealth, innocence, virginity and also laziness. Daisy's color is white, she wears white dresses and recalls her "white childhood", and this use of color helps characterize her as the inaccessible "enchanted". princess” which is embodied in Gatsby’s dream (p.21, l.8-9). Using a green light at the end of a pier to signal a romantic meeting is strikingly similar to the green light at the end of the pier. of Daisy's Buchanan's dock, which becomes the key image of "The Great Gatsby." The initial appearance of the green light occurs when Carraway first sees Gatsby, standing in front of his mansion and stretching his arms toward "a single green light, tiny and distant, which might have been the end of the pier" (p. 22 , L). 31-33). Light has become, for Gatsby, the symbol of reunion with Daisy. Green is most significantly associated with both the green light and the "green bosom of the new world", uniting the hope and promise of Gatsby's dream with that of America itself. The color green is traditionally associated with spring, hope and youth. The color blue in “The Great Gatsby” represents hope for the future. It represents wasted time, a pure color displayed too much, a pure color in the valley of ashes. TJ Eckleburg's eyes are blue, perhaps symbolizing a higher world from which God watches the scene. Tom's blue car may even represent the relationship between Tom and Daisy (being unhappy), based on money and not love. Blue also represents fantasy and is the symbol of a different world. Because Gatsby's lawn is blue, his house is a place where people can escape from reality. His evenings are disconnected from the real world,