Symbolism in the Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Abstract:
Symbolism emphasizes the expression of subjective spirit and personal inner world. It does not adopt the direct description, but chooses the specific images and symbols to imply the subtle and mysterious inner spiritual world and let the reader re-create the emotions and ideas by using the unexplained symbols. F. Scott Fitzgerald applies a lot of symbols and images in his novel The Great Gatsby, which play a significant role in the development of the novel. Fitzgerald evaluates the symbolic meaning of Jazz Age, Roaring Twenties, American dream, the image of Doctor T. Eckleburg, illustration of Valley of Ashes, and all of these things impart the backdrop condition of that era and reflect the characters personality. In this novel we can see Fitzgerald uses various colours and their symbolic importance. The major colour is green, white, yellow, red, blue and grey. The green colour stands for wealth, white for purity, yellow is the colour of gold, which symbolizes money, red is the symbol of violence, danger and rage, blue represents tranquillity, melancholy, loneliness and fantasy, grey symbolizes decadence, bleakness, corruption and disillusionment. These colours have symbolic significance regarding characters, their actions, equipment and their way of life.
Keywords: Symbolism, The Great Gatsby, Jazz Age, Roaring Twenties, American dream, colours.
Introduction
Symbolism is an art movement first emerged in the literary field of the late 19th century French, and then Russian and Belgian, it affects drama, painting, philosophy and other fields. As Margaret Drabble defines symbolism in her The Oxford Companion to English Literature, “The movement may be seen as a reaction against dominant realist and naturalist tendencies in literature generally, and in case of poetry, against the descriptive precision and ‘objectivity’ of the Parnassians.”
The word symbol derives from the Greek verb symbolling, ‘to throw together’, and its noun symbol on, ‘mark’, ‘emblem’, ‘token’ or ‘sign’. It is an object, animate or inanimate, which represents or ‘stands for’ something else and also suggests a range of reference, beyond itself. A literary symbol combines an image with a concept (words themselves are a kind of symbol). It may be public or private, universal or local. They exist, so to speak.
Wang Shanshan writes in her essay Colourful Symbolism in The Great Gatsby, According to the Oxford dictionary symbolism means the practice of representing things by means of symbols or of attributing symbolic meanings or significance to objects, events, or relationships. “Symbol is a way of using something integral to the work to reach beyond the work and engage the world of value outside the work”. (Wang. 2011). Finding the corresponding relationship between the outer things and the inner world through images makes symbolism own the mysterious character. Symbolism reflects a thought tendency in that age of seeking inspiration and enlightenment from the mysterious spiritual world but avoiding facing the reality.
French poet Charles Baudelaire and American poet Allan Poe are the forerunners of symbolism. The Flowers of Evils written by Baudelaire in 1857 is the ground-breaking work of symbolism and has made a significant influence on world literature. Then with the appearance of Baudelaire’s important followers, such as Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé, symbolism became flourishing at the end of the 19th century.
Symbolism can be divided into two periods: pre- symbolism and post-symbolism. Pre- symbolism refers to a French poetry genre that emerged in the second half of the 19th century. It found and explained how to use the intuitive method to experience the world and how to use the hint of image and the dreamlike symbol to recognize the world rather than use the simple imitation and metaphor to reflect the world. Thus, they raise a strong ideological trend of the symbolism poetry, which captures the public’s attention and makes symbolism get permeation and development. Then in the late 19th century, symbolism began to expand to Western Europe and North America beyond the border of France. And in the 1920s, post-symbolism grew up.
Post-symbolism refers to a world literary trend which appears after the First World War, comes to a climax in 1920s and draws to a close in the 1940s. This writing technique is employed in the latter all kinds of writing. As to its main characteristics, it creates the morbid beauty, reflects the most real inner world, creates images in the illusion, employs symbols to imply something and uses musicality to increase the effect of meditation.
The symbolism is to use visible symbols to represent the invisible things, which aim to show the invisible mind and ideas hidden in the visible things. Through the symbolism in a work, readers can get an insight into the writer’s inner world and broader implications. As the symbolism increased in the 1920s, Fitzgerald is intensely inspired from it, we can see in his famous work The Great Gatsby which is regarded as his most mature work whether on thought or on the writing techniques. Use of symbolism makes his work go beyond the limited ordinary world and associate subjectivity with objectivity which has endowed it with representativeness. In his empathize and elucidation of the age, he sees the illusion and superficiality of Gatsby’s dream as well as the failure of the American Dream.
In this novel Fitzgerald employs various symbols like, Jazz Age, Roaring Twenties, American dream, the image of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, illustration of Valley of Ashes, and colours as green, white, yellow, red, blue and grey. They all represent their symbolic meaning and play a significant role in the enhancement of the novel.
The Jazz Age is a term coined by F. Scott Fitzgerald to illustrate the condition of America in 1920. It occurred between the First World War and the Great Depression. The 1920s is considered the Jazz Age because this is the time when jazz music blossomed and became tremendously popular. It is a crazy and difficult time, and full of wealth, frivolity and carelessness. The young man in that period began to rebel against the traditional culture and morality of previous generations, as Gatsby plays a palpable example of it, who had contempt for life and engaged themselves in pursuing money and enjoying the care free hedonism. People like Tom and Daisy are driving fast cars, drinking hard whisky, and taking an immense delight in it. This age owns the most expensive carnival like Gatsby’s extravagant parties. People’s spirit became decadence gradually until its corruption as Gatsby’s illegal business of bootlegging, as alcohol was banned in the entire US.
Jazz Age is also called the Flapper Period and Roaring Twenties. As a result of the financial explosion, people changed their perspectives towards women, by the consequences they obtained more rights and freedom in their work and life, in this way it became a revolt against so-called male chauvinism, which was established through the ages. For example, they wore short skirts and short hair; they smoked, drank and danced wildly. In this novel Daisy and Jordan Baker represent that type of woman, they wore short skirts with short hair, they always seemed to be smoking, drinking and attending parties, Jazz music and wild dance going on. It is also called the Roaring Twenties because of moral decay and the loss of faith, which makes people feel that life is dislocated, chaotic and fragmented as Gatsby always suffers from it. His chaos reflected concretely in the lavish parties, cocktail, jazz, wild dance, violence as well as the conflict between the traditional ethic and the modern values.
Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby articulates the idea of corruption through illustrating people's lust for parties, their obsession to be wealthy, the difference between people who are newly rich and those who inherited their money on one hand, and the class contrast between the upper and the lower. Fitzgerald employs places as a tool to clarify his idea. The West Egg represents Gatsby who is nouveau riche. The East Egg represents the Buchanans who inherited their money and The Valley of Ashes represents the plight of poor people like George Wilson.
"The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, the set of ideals that include liberty, opportunity and equality". Liberty includes prosperity and success for all people. The American Dream is not only a dream of an individual but a dream of a nation and a whole age. On the contrary to it, Gatsby’s dream revolves around an individual motif, to be loved by Daisy. He accumulated wealth after knowing Daisy’s affection for affluent people. So, here one can easily notice how Fitzgerald uses the symbol of the fall of American dream in the life of Gatsby.
Fitzgerald emphasizes Gatsby's universality and the possibility of general identification with his character through alienation; throughout the novel he is the only one to be addressed by his surname, sentimentality is taken away from him and he is graphically described as a model for making success.
The American Dream asserts that wealth can be gained through hard work. Though we can learn from the novel Gatsby’s money comes from crime and illegal activities like bootlegging. Gatsby buys a luxurious mansion in the West Egg but he remains strange from the world of the East Egg that is a world for old money. That's why the novel ends with Nick's sad contemplation of the American Dream.
The image of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg plays a significant role in this novel. His eyes symbolize God’s eyes, judging and looking at people who lost their morality and look down upon humanity and human condition. Nick describes his eyes as “The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent”. (Fitzgerald. 26; Ch.2). Fitzgerald uses a remarkable place for these eyes, along the road from West Egg to Manhattan, near George Wilson's garage. When Daisy, Gatsby, Nick, Tom and Jordan go to West Egg, the eyes of Eckleburg notice them, while returning after coming across the accident of myrtle, the eyes still look at their wrong deeds of ignoring such a huge crime and accountability. The eye symbolizes the complete figure of god. At the end of the novel George Wilson explicates that these are the eyes of God referring to his wife’s infidelity. He says, “God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me but you can’t fool God!”(Fitzgerald. 170; Ch. 8).
The Valley of Ashes is another important symbol used in this novel. It is set between West Egg and New York. The ashes are made by industry that helps others to be rich and it compels to the poor to live in this condition. Nick describes it in his words as, “This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.”( Fitzgerald 26; Ch.2).The poor people who live on this dumping side are endured by the rich people. They used them as Tom used to Myrtle. Symbolically, the Valley of Ashes is a wasteland of human desires and human life. Myrtle hopes to escape after being imprisoned in it. It seems that this place has deprived many characters of their dreams. (Wulick, 2016)
In this novel Fitzgerald employs various colours and their symbolic importance. Green is the colour of spring, which symbolizes confidence, vitality and hope. The green colour is closely associated with the green light that occurred in the novel. Green light is always burning at the end of Daisy’s dock, Gatsby used to see it every day and it gives him hope that one day Daisy will be back in his life. Green also stands for wealth, only because of Daisy he wants to become a rich man.
White colour represents the immaculate and pure beauty and it symbolizes nobleness and purity. It is closely associated with Daisy. Daisy used to wear white dress throughout the novel. At the age of eighteen she had white car and her home is full of white colour. Even Daisy’s name means a kind of white flower with a yellow disc. It means Daisy seems to be pure and noble but inherently Daisy owns a superficial, hollow, cold and selfish heart inside as yellow.
Red is associated with blood, so it is the symbol of violence, danger and rage. Red can show Tom’s individual character as selfish, arrogant, barbarous, and cruel. After knowing Daisy kills his mistress unintentionally by Gatsby’s car, out of envy, he instigates his mistress’s husband to kill Gatsby, from which we can see his selfishness and cruelty.
Yellow is the colour of gold, which symbolizes money, materialism and high social position. Yellow is the colour that the aristocratic class uses to decorate themselves in Western culture, so it represents wealth and noble identity. With the intention of winning Daisy back in his life Gatsby chooses the yellow colour to decorate himself and his house to show that he has been one member of the aristocratic class.
Blue colour represents tranquillity, melancholy, loneliness and fantasy. In the novel, Gatsby’s garden is described as full of blue colour, such as “blue leaves” and “blue lawn” and in this blue garden he organized lavish parties to allure Daisy. But he never takes part in them and he never enjoys those parties, it represents melancholy of his inner heart.
Grey colour symbolizes decadence, bleakness, corruption and disillusionment and represents moral decay, spiritual emptiness and death. The valley of ashes is a grey place in the novel, where everything is coloured grey. Every grey thing in the Valley of Ashes makes people feel depressed, hopeless and afflicted. Many scenes like the guest of Gatsby’s parties have grey names, Myrtle’s living room is filled with grey smoke and the accident which kills Myrtle happens in the dusk, all these grey scenes symbolize spiritual emptiness, moral decadence, gloomy life and sad tragedy.
Conclusion
The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s magnum opus and one of the best American novels in the 20th century. The symbolism plays a significant role in the developing plot, silhouetting characters and deepening the themes. Fitzgerald uses finest symbolic component in the novel, such as characteristic of Jazz Age, Jazz music in Gatsby’s lavish parties, characters follow their American dream but can’t accomplish it, the poor people compel to live in the Valley of ashes, all these conditions seen by the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, and the symbolic importance of all colours which appear throughout the novel.
Bibliography