The Great Gatsby Theme Essay

Improved Essays
To both the fictional characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel, and its endless readers, Jay Gatsby’s overly decadent lifestyle and lavish parties were considered to be the ultimate American Dream and a source of excitement and pleasure. However, a close evaluation of the themes of the The Great Gatsby reveals the meretriciousness of wealth and how it brings more displeasure in life than it brings happiness. The first symbol expressing this theme is the color green, specifically the green light and how it shows desires beyond wealth. Another symbol supporting this theme is Jay Gatsby’s mansion which contains the collection of Gatsby’s expensive exotic items, but is vacuous of people who truly love him, showing that possessions don’t bring …show more content…
The final symbols discussed in this literary analysis are Daisy and Tom and how they show the unhappiness wealth can bring.

Though many desire wealth, Gatsby has obtained it, yet it has not brought him happiness. The green light of the Buchanan’s dock, that Gatsby observes and longs for from his dock, is probably the most well known symbol in The Great Gatsby, and it is used as evidence for many different themes. Its green color, and other green things, represent potentially unattainable things of desire, very few of which are wealth. The

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Once Gatsby’s dream of Daisy fades away –similar to the iconic representation of the fading green light on the dock- so does the “driving forth” of Gatsby’s money. His dream of her disintegrates, much like the American Dream that was prominent in the 1920s. Thus, Fitzgerald portrays that not only Gatsby is guilty of this thirst for wealth, whether it have a purpose or not. Many Americans in this time period were subordinates of the sins of avarice and prodigality.…

    • 633 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Great Gatsby is one of the most famous American novels of all time. It has many film adaptions and is set in the roaring twenties by F. Scott Fitzgerald it was immediately well received. A tragic love story about the immensely wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for socialite Daisy Buchannan, the novel is said to be an exemplary novel of the jazz age of the United States. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is a very visual and descriptive piece of literature, the novel is colorful and Fitzgerald uses colors to symbolize different things in the novel. Color symbolism plays an essential role in the novel.…

    • 1472 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    In the novel there is a love triangle with Tom and Gatsby pining for Daisy’s love, Gatsby see’s that Tom does not actually care about Daisy, but Tom continues to pretend he is in love for only Daisy. The novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is about how wealth and power have corrupted the American Dream. This is demonstrated through Fitzgerald’s use of imagery, characterization, and motifs. Imagery is used to convey the characters mood and tone in the book, without directly stating what they are thinking. Wealth is generally represented in the colors gold, silver, and green.…

    • 1551 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Oluwatumininu C. Tyndall Mr. Matt Hohn English-10 16 October 2015 The Race to Wealth and its Demise The Great Gatsby is a classic novel in which money is the center of focus in the characters lives, but after all money can’t buy happiness. This specific novel is often referred to as “The Great American Novel”; it gained its title because it portrays the prosperity and success of achieved goals. The book also interprets these following characteristics: immorality, obsession, and dissatisfaction of unfulfilled dreams for upward social mobility.…

    • 1043 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is set in the 1920s, a period of incredible prosperity, exorbitance, and brilliance. Although it was an era of incredible success, people became blinded by the immense amount of money neighboring them. As a result, they ventured out to go on a tremendous conquest in search of these riches. However, people lost the true meaning of happiness and solely focused on becoming wealthy. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses symbolism to exhibit that contentment is not merely established on the notion of acquiring money.…

    • 2004 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1920s/Great Gatsby Paired Essay The 1920s were a period of prosperity and opportunity and a period of excess and unrest. Some people think the time in the 1920s were hard times, for example people struggled with money and jobs. Other people believe it was an easy time where no one really had to worry about anything. They partied, spent money, just had fun, and have no worry in the world.…

    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    "A function of the mental apparatus which through it does not contradict the pleasure principle,is nevertheless independent of it and seems to be more primitive than the purpose of gaining pleasure and avoiding unpleasure." In F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous novel 'The Great Gatsby',Jay Gatsby is a man who has obtained what every average person would love to achieve in life which is Wealth and a great reputation, yet he still has one goal that he has yes to take a hold of. Daisy Fay is as put in Langston Hughes poem of 'Dream Deferred" a dream that "just sags like a heavy load." that Gatsby can not seem to have or shake off because in the end,Gatsby doesn't have his dream he has yet to get. That goal is To have Daisy Fay and her love and show her off as a possession. Gatsby had goals and plans for himself but his true aspiration in life was to end up with Daisy and since he did not get the girl,Gatsby's own personal view…

    • 689 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Thesis Statement: I believe that wealth does not immediately define the morals and sins of those who are possession of it, due to many lower class characters partaking in immoral acts, morals being shaped by upbringing, not bank, and that lower class citizens have a wealthy and greedy mindset, but are, in fact, not wealthy themselves. Subclaim 1: In The Great Gatsby, a majority of the characters portrayed as being part of the lower class are shown to be just as immoral as those who were born into wealth. Evidence 1: “I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited—they went there.…

    • 1670 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The green light emitted by Daisy’s mansion ultimately symbolizes hope and the American Dream for Gatsby. Through the emphasis of color symbolism, the green light ironically suggests that regardless of wealth and power, the aristocratic class continues to suffer from…

    • 903 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Critical Interpretation of The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby is a 1920 novel written by the American author Scott. Fitzgerald. The novel itself takes place in Long Island, New York throughout the summer of 1922. Nick Carraway, Daisy’s cousin, peripherally narrates the novel in first-person.…

    • 2253 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout “The Great Gatsby”, published by award-winning author F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925, multiple characters are shown to undergo major changes in their personalities or the way they are portrayed. Be it the concept of Daisy as a pure, angelic being at the beginning quickly morphing into one of her as a superficial person, or the perception of Gatsby as a rich, enigmatic man contorting into one of him as a naïve and blind protagonist, each character’s development affects the book’s plot and works for character development. At the forefront of this development is the narrator himself, Nick Carraway, as he changes radically to understand the world around him. Take, for example, the way that Nick’s naïveté in the introduction is overtaken, resulting in him becoming…

    • 765 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    On the surface of the novel written by Scott F. Fitzgerald, one may say that "The Great Gatsby" illustrates a classic American story with a plot twist, having one of the preeminent characters pass in an abrupt and unforeseen way. However, underneath that very surface lies the resounding theme of the novel—The American Dream. "The Great Gatsby" is a pure symbolic reflection of America in the 1920s, depicting the effects of the sudden boom in the marketplace and the intensified materialistic views people gained. The American Dream in the novel is stripped of its ambition and gaiety once Fitzgerald spun a mordant critique of that particular decaying illusion in the society of the '20s, where people 's ethical significance was splintering, and their giddy greed for wealth and superfluous material items resulted in hedonism—which very well still happens today.…

    • 1357 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Color plays an important role in the way we perceive society. People relate colors to certain emotions, as an example, one may say that they are “green with envy” or when they are “feeling blue” when they are sad. In the novel, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author uses color symbolism throughout the story to represent different aspects of each situation. Fitzgerald uses the color green a great deal in the storyline. It represents Gatsby’s dream and hope to live happily with the love of his dreams, Daisy Buchannan.…

    • 1513 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, varying characters experience a multitude of events in attempt to achieve their strenuous goal of accomplishing the American Dream in the 1920s. The pursuits of wealth and happiness, principles of the American Dream, are incredibly profound and significant within The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel criticizes the wealthy class, as well as first elaborates on how to differentiate between the two prominent affluent groups, consisting of those born into wealth and those who acquired their wealth that frequently clash with each other. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby contrasts the polar opposite lifestyles and aesthetics of East Egg and West Egg, displaying the fast- paced ephemera of East Egg, and “West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them” (Fitzgerald 6). The copious amounts of trials and tribulations regarding trivial materialistic wants the protagonists and deuteragonists face in The Great Gatsby end in their deaths as well as detrimental scarring…

    • 1005 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote an American classic, The Great Gatsby. Then, in 2013, Baz Luhrmann directed an adaptation starring Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio. Of course, they have similarities except they also have striking differences. Things such as characters and settings of the book have changed in the movie.…

    • 1253 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays