Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; while Nick Carraway’s depiction of the valley of ashes, a desolate and bare land that connects the West Egg and New York, does not remind the audience of beauty, through the content and style of this depiction, beauty seeps from every corner of every sentence, flowing like a vibrant river across the passage. Nick’s dedication to vivid descriptions of even the bleakest of lands creates this lifelike and almost tangible image of a lost opportunity. What lost opportunity does this represent? Simply put, the valley of ashes illustrates the death of the American dream, from the frequent usage of negative adjectives to the abandoned eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg so prominently displayed. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
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Ironically, Nick uses images often associated with growth or success to depict this land of deceased dreams, relating it to, “a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens”(Fitzgerald 23). Though the description itself explains and entails the depressing scene, by using words like farm, wheat, and garden, he uses a semblance of growth to establish the framework for this withering atmosphere drenched in ashes. When paired with emphatic alliteration used throughout the passage, the valley of ashes transcends Nick’s thoughts and forms its own entity in the mind of the audience. Along with the consistently strong use of words, he uses long, carefully-constructed sentences to capture the full detail of the barren land. The heavy focus on the structure of the valley of ashes by laying an infrastructure through contradictory yet fitting imagery and diction coupled with knowledgeable, definitive syntax provides enough evidence to affirm the claim of desolate …show more content…
J. Eckleburg. To Nick, these eyes obviously stand out, elaborating on them by saying, “They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose”(23). When describing this passage with all its gray and ash, Nick only finds life and vibrancy in the blue eyes with their yellow spectacles, seemingly a glimmer of hope shining over a sea of despair. This thought dismisses itself quickly upon learning the background of the eyes: “some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away”(24). To Nick, this sign must stand as proof that even the most outwardly indomitable facades hide failure behind their bright exterior. The main message Nick displays through his vivid descriptions, intelligent portrayal of color, and careful, eloquent use of syntax unfortunately emphasizes the previous claims that hope always gives way to
Ironically, Nick uses images often associated with growth or success to depict this land of deceased dreams, relating it to, “a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens”(Fitzgerald 23). Though the description itself explains and entails the depressing scene, by using words like farm, wheat, and garden, he uses a semblance of growth to establish the framework for this withering atmosphere drenched in ashes. When paired with emphatic alliteration used throughout the passage, the valley of ashes transcends Nick’s thoughts and forms its own entity in the mind of the audience. Along with the consistently strong use of words, he uses long, carefully-constructed sentences to capture the full detail of the barren land. The heavy focus on the structure of the valley of ashes by laying an infrastructure through contradictory yet fitting imagery and diction coupled with knowledgeable, definitive syntax provides enough evidence to affirm the claim of desolate …show more content…
J. Eckleburg. To Nick, these eyes obviously stand out, elaborating on them by saying, “They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose”(23). When describing this passage with all its gray and ash, Nick only finds life and vibrancy in the blue eyes with their yellow spectacles, seemingly a glimmer of hope shining over a sea of despair. This thought dismisses itself quickly upon learning the background of the eyes: “some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away”(24). To Nick, this sign must stand as proof that even the most outwardly indomitable facades hide failure behind their bright exterior. The main message Nick displays through his vivid descriptions, intelligent portrayal of color, and careful, eloquent use of syntax unfortunately emphasizes the previous claims that hope always gives way to