The novel The Great Gatsby was written by F. S. Fitzgerald in 1925. It continued the Dreiser’s theme of the American tragedy. The events took place in the Jazz age. Imagine a country at the height of its economic growth. The world is ruled by money, luxury, prosperity, and well-being. The twenties were the happiest time in the United States. Nobody could even imagine the Great Depression. At the street musicians started to play improvised jazz, which displaced the old classical styles in music. It was the golden age in the American literature that gave us the works of Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald was a writer of bright and undeniable talent. In The Great Gatsby, he managed to reach what he considered was the main goal of art. He left a lasting imprint in the minds of the readers. The author sought to convey through various artistic techniques the hopeless life of rich Americans, and, like many artists of the early 20th century, turned to the color and sound symbolism. Mainly used colors were white, gray, yellow or gold, green, and blue.
The Great Gatsby is the brightest novel about rich Americans. In the world full of deception, treachery, vanity, lust for money, an easy success, a a genuine feeling of love distinguished it from other carnival masks. But even for his love the main character uses unfair and deceptive methods. The life of the secular city was described as one big carnival, which at the beginning of the book was shining in splendor, then gradually declined in swearing and scandals followed by the next carnival. Gatsby believed that the green light that he saw had the meaning, it gave him strength to believe. He never caught it. The green color in Fitzgerald’s novels symbolized money and hope. It is interesting if the author saw the connection between them. He hated money, considered them destructive and, maybe, he saw some hope that people could be rich but remain human like Gatsby did.
When Nick Carraway first met his cousin Daisy at the home of her husband Tom, she was fully dressed in white: “She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster” (Fitzgerald 64). In my opinion, with this color the author wanted to underline the beauty, purity, wealth, innocence, femininity of Daisy. Fitzgerald hated the wealth. What at the beginning was described attractively, actually had a deep gloomy meaning. As you know, the flower daisy is white with the yellow center. Daisy’s innocence was the petal, while inside everything was yellow. For Fitzgerald this color had a strongly negative value. She looked delicate and fragile, but her soul was cruel. The irony of the author is that traditionally positive white that symbolizes purity, innocence and kindness, usually goes with other colors.
Fitzgerald's heroes had not had any achievements. They lived with expectations. They were listening to the promises of unattainable future or an equally unattainable past, enjoying that perfect blend of past and future. So, the voice of Daisy symbolized those weak time of joy: “and a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just awhile since and that there were gay, exciting things the hovering in the next hour” (Fitzgerald, p. 13-14). The reality of the future has been always poorer than it was dreamed. When Gatsby met Daisy after five years of expectations and hopes, his dreamed future became a reality, but at that moment he lost his dream.
The tragic death of Gatsby symbolized the carnival and the century of Jazz. Carnival always ends this way, spontaneously, ironic, tragic, and dramatically. It just stops. Its essence is that money and wealth should be worthy of reward for the hard, diligent work. The greatness of Jay Gatsby was not in his hard work or ability to earn money. He became great for the readers, because he managed to remain a decent person. However, his dreams failed and all the illusions collapsed. Gatsby's death at the end of the novel is the apotheosis of the American dream" and his own illusory world that has no place among the sober and prudence of the rich.
I believe that the book clearly describes the type of our lives: the perpetual wandering, attempts to escape from reality, idealization of the dream. We cherish, we cultivate our distant dream, and in the end, it becomes a hundred times more beautiful than its realization. Gatsby lost the meaning of life when he found Daisy and understood that he had drawn her in his mind creating the ideal of a woman that in fact does not exists. We become disillusioned, shattering on the rocks of reality. It hurts. And we are trying to escape that cruel real world, remaining in an imaginary world, created to protect ourselves from a disappointment. I think that reading this book, you will not experience any joy or sadness, you will not be afraid, you will not feel anxious. Because the whole book is written almost in the uniform of the emotional wave, with little actions. But you will enjoy it. You will find a plenty symbolize things related to your own life.
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, 1996. Print.
Works Cited
DWI/DUI Laws of U.S. States (DWI/DUI Laws of U.S. States). Retrieved from http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol/DrivingIssues/1104284869.html#.VFdM3p9iSH0
