This dead land symbolises the struggle of poorer America, a factor which is not just easy for the reader to forget, but was also ignored by the richer society of America in the 1920s when the Zeitgeist was all about the continuous pursuit of richness and excess. The images of “dead land”, “A little life with dried tubers” and “stony rubbish” all appear in Eliot’s masterpiece and mirror the Valley of Ashes. The Valley of Ashes shares many similarities with “The Wasteland”, the poem by T.S. Wilson’s petrol station and the “persistent stare” of the Dr. The Valley of Ashes, first introduced in the second chapter of Fitzgerald’s novel, is a ”grey land” with “spasms of bleak dust” between West Egg and New York City, almost completely empty with the exception of Mr. Nick describes himself as being “one of the few honest people he has ever known” However they all lose this idea of innocence as they arrive in the East and end up finding themselves as part of this corrupt lifestyle. Nick, Gatsby and Tom Buchanan all derive from the Mid West, all pursuing the American Dream. The Mid West portrays the idea of an honest America with an honest American dream. The East Coast represents the richness and excessiveness to which the American Dream is orientated, making it lose its true meaning, and slide into a world of corruption and lies, just like the dream Gatsby followed. Three kinds of America are described in the book: the business centre that is East Coast where the novel dominantly takes place, the Mid West, the heart of America from which all the novel’s main characters come, and the Valley of Ashes, which despite being situated on the East Coast, is a stretch of dead land between West Egg and New York City. Wilson and then of course eventually his own demise.Īn important aspect within The Great Gatsby is the geography. However, as with Daisy, Gatsby’s cover is also blown, his mask removed, “his career as Trimalchio over” through the death of Mrs. But what do you want? What do you expect?” This is important since symbolically it shows the reader that like the books, Gatsby is not what he appears to be, wearing a mask, hiding his career as a bootlegger and not being the innocent, great man his party guests make him to be. In this sequence, a middle-aged man wearing “enormous owl-eyed spectacles” (perhaps a link to Dr Eckleburg, God) shows Nick that despite Gatsby’s books being real, they haven’t had their pages cut yet: “What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too – didn’t cut the pages. Symbolically, Fitzgerald presents this theme through Gatsby’s books in his library in chapter 3. For example, the dispute between Jordan Baker and Nick about whether Gatsby did indeed attend Oxford University. Gatsby’s false identity is also often brought to the reader’s attention. This image of innocence is destroyed when Gatsby reveals to Nick that it was Daisy behind the wheel as Mrs. Daisy also plays along to this idea of herself in which acts like the naïve, all-American girl.
#Symbols in the great gatsby movie full#
Throughout the novel, Daisy, a woman with a “mouth full of money”, is described as wearing white clothes which “gleam like silver” similar to a wedding dress, which of course is a universal symbol for innocence. This concept dominantly implies to Gatsby himself and his lover Daisy, and is supported by a range of symbols. One of the main themes within The Great Gatsby is the idea of people putting on a mask and bringing forth a false identity. The Great Gatsby is renowned for the fantastic use of symbols appearing in the form of objects, characters and colours, representing abstract ideas or concepts and helping to develop the book’s major themes.īecause The Great Gatsby is so rich in symbols (no pun intended), Fitzgerald wants to bring across that it is not only the reader who is aware of the meaning of these symbols, but also the characters within the novel. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, first published 1926, is a book about the pursuit of the American Dream during the period of the United States prosperity.