Cars In The Great Gatsby The significance of cars in The Great Gatsby is immensely displayed throughout the novel. Automobiles in The Great Gatsby are status symbols for various characters, but also holds as symbols of American society in general, so that cars are inauspicious signs of socio-economic and moral collapse. Fitzgerald displays how moral and tangible objects can ruin a persons spiritual intuition. Cars are symbolically represented by the way a character drives, its color, and the murders that a car can commit. Driving in The Great Gatsby is symbolic to the carelessness of the rich in the 1920s. Fitzgerald conveys this throughout the characters in the novel. Jordan Baker is a significant representation of this. Through her handling
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"Fitzgerald makes all cars become the death car to Michaelis, who spends the night watching Wilson" (Madison). Whenever a car goes "roaring up the road outside it sounded to him like the car that hadn 't stopped a few hours before" (Fitzgerald 157). Symbolically even though the car had already served its purpose of killing Myrtle, it still possesses its role as the death car. With Myrtles fatality, two still remain: Gatsby and Wilson. Gatsby 's car, a symbol of unending death, now a stigmatized dream, brings moral peril to Gatsby and Wilson. To be certain that the reader catches the symbolic significance of cars, he gives some more insight on death by comparing it to water. As Nick proceeds to ride over the water and over Queensboro Bridge, they come in contact with an ongoing funeral: Nick is immensely satisfied that "the sight of Gatsby 's splendid car was included in the somber holiday" (69). The reader soon draws attention to this funeral when Fitzgerald uses an odd but creative phrase exclaiming "a dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms" (69). Soon the reader realizes that Fitzgerald has placed everything in order for Myrtle 's death. Whenever a car peers into the view the accident itself seems to become inevitable. Evidently Myrtles death takes place and she is left with an amputated breast just like the amputated wheels in former scenes. The death car, which is now described as light green symbolizing a fading dream and fading
"Fitzgerald makes all cars become the death car to Michaelis, who spends the night watching Wilson" (Madison). Whenever a car goes "roaring up the road outside it sounded to him like the car that hadn 't stopped a few hours before" (Fitzgerald 157). Symbolically even though the car had already served its purpose of killing Myrtle, it still possesses its role as the death car. With Myrtles fatality, two still remain: Gatsby and Wilson. Gatsby 's car, a symbol of unending death, now a stigmatized dream, brings moral peril to Gatsby and Wilson. To be certain that the reader catches the symbolic significance of cars, he gives some more insight on death by comparing it to water. As Nick proceeds to ride over the water and over Queensboro Bridge, they come in contact with an ongoing funeral: Nick is immensely satisfied that "the sight of Gatsby 's splendid car was included in the somber holiday" (69). The reader soon draws attention to this funeral when Fitzgerald uses an odd but creative phrase exclaiming "a dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms" (69). Soon the reader realizes that Fitzgerald has placed everything in order for Myrtle 's death. Whenever a car peers into the view the accident itself seems to become inevitable. Evidently Myrtles death takes place and she is left with an amputated breast just like the amputated wheels in former scenes. The death car, which is now described as light green symbolizing a fading dream and fading