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Colour Symbolism In The Great Gatsby

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The Colourful World of The Great Gatsby
In the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald utilizes colour symbolism to enhance each character’s personality flaws and convey a symbolic meaning behind everything the characters do. Throughout the novel, the colours that highlight these flaws are Green, Yellow, White, and Silver. Each colour conveys important symbolic meanings, which ultimately highlight each character’s tainted personalities. Fitzgerald magnifies these clearly identifiable flaws in Gatsby, Daisy, and Myrtle through the use of colour symbolism throughout his novel.

The first colour, which F. Scott Fitzgerald introduces to the reader, is the colour green. Green embodies the hope in which Gatsby clings on to and the limitless dream …show more content…
The green light, which Nick refers to, is the hope Gatsby has for his relationship with Daisy, to be rekindled and grow stronger. At this point in the novel, Gatsby has no real relationship with Daisy and the only attachment he has to her are his memories of them both together. Thus, Gatsby is emotionally and physically distant from her. When Nick sees Gatsby for the first time he sees him reach out his arms towards the green light at the end of the dock while “he was trembling” (Fitzgerald 22). Gatsby is desperately reaching for his dream and is trembling because of the near proximity of this dream but the distance he still must overcome to obtain this. An example of the dream almost being achieved is: "Now it was again a green light on a dock," (Fitzgerald 94). From this sense of achievement, Gatsby believes he has won Daisy over but as we find out later in the novel Daisy was only wooed for a moment and slowly recedes away from Gatsby and returns to her normal life. Gatsby Daniel J. Schneider connects the green light to “the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us,” (Schneider 254) providing the reader with the inventible dilemma which Gatsby is

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