Imagery In The Great Gatsby

People generally associate colours with emotions. For example, red with rage and blue with sadness. Often authors use this instinctive nature to add imagery. Authors not only use this literary device, but many also use symbols and recurring descriptions of characters, in order to add imagery and to add literary depth to a novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses these in his book The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is about the Roaring Twenties, a time where the first World War had just ended, and everyone was clinging to their worldly possessions like a toddler clings to its mother. Nick Carraway, the narrator, meets Jay Gatsby, a rich neighbor of Nick’s. Gatsby befriends Nick and tells him that he is in love with Nick’s cousin, Daisy. Daisy, who once …show more content…
For instance, the colour of Gatsby’s car, yellow, is often associated with happiness and wealth. In the novel it portrays this too, as Gatsby tries to make it seem, by appearances, as though he were a rich somebody, and to make it seem as though he could take care of Daisy, in a way that she was used to. Contrarily, later on in the novel, it seems to be that yellow portrays death and selfishness. Gatsby’s car, driven by Daisy, ran over Myrtle, Tom’s lover. For the rest of the novel, yellow shows that not everything “happy” is perfect and that there is corruption and greed in the world. In addition to yellow, green also illustrates two different meanings. Throughout the novel, green illustrates hope. Everytime Gatsby looked at the green light of his dock, he was reminded of Daisy and how much he wanted her back. But green also portrayed doubt. Nick looked at the green light and realized the future and the past were lost. The past couldn’t be changed and that’s all that Gatsby wanted. Gatsby wanted to past to be different so he thought he could fix the mistake he made so many years ago, in the present. However, in the end, green truly did represent hope. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter--to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…”(Fitzgerald

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