Red In The Great Gatsby

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When thinking of the color red it may be seen in one of two ways. Positively red symbolizes warm feelings of passion, cheer and love. Red also has a dangerous negative side that symbolizes the expression of anger, aggression and power. Red can be used in many ways to call attention to either side of the intense emotions affiliated with the presentation of the color. F. Scott Fitzgerald, an author of many accredited novels, uses color to give his work “life.” He uses color symbolism to show major character developments and reveal hidden messages through clues given each time a color is used. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, he uses the many shades of red to represent themes such as dishonesty through a variety of characters including …show more content…
In the novel when Myrtle dies we do not immediately know it was Daisy and Gatsby: “The “death car”, as the newspapers called it, didn’t stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment and then disappeared around the next bend. ….Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick, dark blood with the dust.” (Fitzgerald 144-145) We know later that Jay is covering up for Daisy because she is actually the one who hits Myrtle when driving back from New York City. Gatsby never stops to help Myrtle after she is hit because he is too obsessed with trying to make sure Daisy is okay. He is the reason why the car swerves in the road trying to take over and drive home so it never looks like Daisy was driving. Dishonesty is apparent through the whole novel from the start of Tom’s affair to the end of Myrtle’s life with Daisy’s …show more content…
Through looking at all the shades of red in the novel, its affiliation with both the positive and negative sides becomes evident. The darker the shades the more negative it becomes. These affiliations with the shades really are what give the colors “life.” This life that the color is given helps show how the author is relating the hidden messages or clues given each time the color is used to the big picture of the novel. This big picture can be related to the real world in many cases. With the use of analyzing color symbolism in a book, a deeper meaning could be

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