56 pages • 1 hour read
F. Scott FitzgeraldThe Great Gatsby
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1925A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Green Light
At numerous points in the narrative, a green light emanates from Daisy’s dock, which can be seen from Gatsby’s house. To Gatsby, this light represents his hopes and dreams of rekindling his youthful relationship with Daisy from many years ago. Of this light and Gatsby’s attitude toward it, Nick says, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (176). Beyond Gatsby’s feelings toward Daisy, the light has a broader meaning: It represents the American dream that beckons while remaining just out of reach. Gatsby’s success only emphasizes The Illusion of the American Dream in the 1920s. To achieve his social status, Gatsby had to become a criminal, and even then he is still excluded from the upper echelons of American society and watches it from across the water.
The Valley of Ashes
The valley of ashes is an industrial dumpsite filled with the waste created by the wealthy residents of West and East Egg. Both literally and symbolically, it represents the stark divide between rich and poor on Long Island. Given that Tom’s mistress Myrtle lives there, it is a place where the ostensible morality of the upper class is suspended. Moreover, just as the trash from parties like Gatsby’s is dumped in the valley of ashes, people who live there like George are the recipients of all the emotional toxicity caused by the interpersonal relationships of the wealthier characters.
T. J. Eckleburg’s Eyes
The faded billboard featuring Dr. T. J. Eckleburg’s giant bespectacled eyes looms over the valley of ashes. On its most basic level, the dilapidated billboard represents the decay visited upon the industrial wasteland that sits in the shadow of West and East Egg’s wealth and prosperity. Yet to George, tormented by his wife’s infidelity and later her death, the eyes represent the eyes of an uncaring God who watches over a land devastated by industrial capitalism yet does nothing. Given the separate interpretations of the billboard held by various characters, the eyes are an example of Fitzgerald’s contention that individuals, not authors, imbue symbols with meaning.
Cars
Cars play a series of concrete and symbolic roles in The Great Gatsby. One of the earliest and profound displays of rich arrogance and carelessness comes when Nick watches a pair of men stumble out of the car that they drunkenly drove into a ditch on the way home from Gatsby’s. That such deadly power is wielded haphazardly by men and women who behave as recklessly in their personal lives as they do on the road serves as foreshadowing to the tragic accident that kills Myrtle and sets in motion the book’s tragic conclusion. Elsewhere, Tom dangles the prospect of selling a car to George as an excuse to visit his mistress Myrtle at the garage. Finally, Gatsby’s Rolls Royce is an ostentatious signifier of his perceived inferiority as a so-called “new money” millionaire, isolating him from the more aristocratic Tom and Daisy.
Related Titles
By F. Scott Fitzgerald
