The Color White In The Great Gatsby

From the American Dream to learning about the Roaring Twenties, F. Scott Fitzgerald has taught students all around the world many things from his book, which has been a classic for many years and was one of his biggest achievements. The Great Gatsby has taught students how their society lives in today from learning from the past and how they’ve grown from it. This novel is about a young man, Nick Carraway, and how he observes all of his friends, their lifestyles and their efforts to achieve their desperate dreams, turns out in the end Nick only learns from their mistakes. While observing, Nick uses colors often to describe his surroundings. Color is very symbolic in this book, describing the littlest things could go beyond their meaning. In …show more content…
White is commonly used to describe the upper-class. The color could easily portray privilege towards individuals. For instance, “[their conversation] were as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of desires” (Fitzgerald 12). The use of the color white in this sentence conveys privilege, the privilege how very easy these upper-class women have it in their lives and that everything would be handed to them easily. The color white is seen again to ultimately show plenty of innocence. It is shown in this sentence from the passage; “… Our white girlhood was passed together, our beautiful white-” (19). The connection of the color white displays that even in the past, they were innocent and pure. The color white also demonstrates both class and innocence. Nick was saying “… High in the white palace the Kings daughter, the golden girl” (120). This correctly establishes both class and innocence, it represents class in a way because of the graciousness related with the castle, it also represents innocence, since she is in a high palace it is acted as a fortress, keeping her very “high” away from the people down below. The symbolic motif of white is portrayed as innocence and privilege, expressing to us that the upper-class could have it all and still stay …show more content…
The first look of the color green was when Gatsby appeared. When Gatsby stretched towards a; “single green light, minute and far away that might have been the end of a dock” (Fitzgerald 21) The green light that Gatsby is reaching out towards is at the end of the Buchanan’s dock and quite possibly is the start of Gatsby’s hope. He is reaching out towards this light as though it was someone he loves whom is Daisy and that the light could represent what could be with them, that there is a sign of hope with them together. The green light is mentioned again in Chapter 5 to show hope is finally reached. Gatsby mentioned the green light to Daisy saying “If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay” he also said “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock” (92). This is telling us that Gatsby is fully aware of the green light at the end of the dock that is no longer there, seeing that the green light that represented a desire for a dream is no longer there anymore conveys that the dream is finally fulfilled. That the green light is no longer needed. Yet in the end, the green light was just simply a green light. When Nick says at the end of the book that “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us…” (180). Nick implies that the green light