The Valley of Ashes is the industrial wasteland between West Egg and Manhattan; next to train tracks and a road that the main characters of Gatsby have to travel on to get into the city. This valley acquired its name due to the how gray and smoke-filled it is, aspects caused by the nearby factories’ smokestacks depositing soot and ash throughout the area. It is also the home of Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan’s mistress. Fitzgerald uses imagery of mainly natural images, language, color and symbolism to show how the Valley of Ashes came to represent a place of hopelessness and the home of the forgotten poor who had to live there in order to enable the lifestyle of the wealthy citizens of the Eggs, never able to break free of their horrible realities.
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“Halfway between West Egg and New York”, the area is significant because it is the only mode of transportation that the rich can take in order to go to the city. This forces them to have to look where their wealth is coming from, and while they benefit from the factories, the poor have to live with the negative consequences of industry. A motor-road and railroad run alongside the valley in a way as though to look like they shrinking “away from a certain desolate area and land”, imagery that allows readers to see how miserable the area must be. The significance of ashes is very important to understand the area itself and the people who occupy it, as ashes themselves are the powdery residue left after one burns anything. The rich benefit from the fire in industry, fire that is burning with passion and allowing them to become wealthy, but all the poor are that with are the ashes and the almost non-existent leftovers that can blow away at any moment. Ashes make one think of color gray, representing bleakness, sadness, and deacy. Fitzgerald uses this color to perfectly embody the lives of the poor and the deaths of their American Dreams. The valley of where things are brought to be thrown away, to die alongside the hope of those who live …show more content…
Farms represent hard work, but land that you can reap the benefits from with that work. The valley doesn’t seem to actually be a typical farm, as the occupants work hard to never to be to find success. The “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills,” natural images are continued to be used to show that now industry and its product, pollution, has taken over the agriculture that reigned in earlier periods of time. Farms and “gardens” are man-made and controlled parts of nature that need to be tended to in order to flourish. The residents are the ones who carry “leaden spades” to care for the land, burt rather than thriving, the gardens remain “grotesque ” and forever distorted. Fitzgerald uses imagery to allow readers to see that the entire depiction of the landscape is disturbing; the beauty of the natural world has now been horribly transformed into a hellscape of
“Halfway between West Egg and New York”, the area is significant because it is the only mode of transportation that the rich can take in order to go to the city. This forces them to have to look where their wealth is coming from, and while they benefit from the factories, the poor have to live with the negative consequences of industry. A motor-road and railroad run alongside the valley in a way as though to look like they shrinking “away from a certain desolate area and land”, imagery that allows readers to see how miserable the area must be. The significance of ashes is very important to understand the area itself and the people who occupy it, as ashes themselves are the powdery residue left after one burns anything. The rich benefit from the fire in industry, fire that is burning with passion and allowing them to become wealthy, but all the poor are that with are the ashes and the almost non-existent leftovers that can blow away at any moment. Ashes make one think of color gray, representing bleakness, sadness, and deacy. Fitzgerald uses this color to perfectly embody the lives of the poor and the deaths of their American Dreams. The valley of where things are brought to be thrown away, to die alongside the hope of those who live …show more content…
Farms represent hard work, but land that you can reap the benefits from with that work. The valley doesn’t seem to actually be a typical farm, as the occupants work hard to never to be to find success. The “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills,” natural images are continued to be used to show that now industry and its product, pollution, has taken over the agriculture that reigned in earlier periods of time. Farms and “gardens” are man-made and controlled parts of nature that need to be tended to in order to flourish. The residents are the ones who carry “leaden spades” to care for the land, burt rather than thriving, the gardens remain “grotesque ” and forever distorted. Fitzgerald uses imagery to allow readers to see that the entire depiction of the landscape is disturbing; the beauty of the natural world has now been horribly transformed into a hellscape of