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Color In The Great Gatsby

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Color In The Great Gatsby
Colors and Descriptions for Emotion
Colors within the novel are also used to stir the emotion of the reader. Fitzgerald changes the color of the car used by Gatsby at first it is cream colored, but it later changes to yellow the color of corruption and greed after Daisy and Gatsby strike and kill Myrtle. When Fitzgerald writes, “With enchanting murmurs Daisy admired this aspect or that of the feudal silhouette against the sky, admired the gardens, the sparkling odor of jonquils and the frothy odor of hawthorn and plum blossoms and the pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the gate” (p. 96). He was writing a vivid description again mixing the senses of smell by first having you smell a frothy odor then a golden one. Fitzgerald uses the sense of smelling
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By introducing the imaginary of the green light at the beginning of the novel Fitzgerald is using it to make the reader feels as though they need to find out more about this mysterious green light. Water is also used within the novel to provoke a perception of uncertainty in the novel an example is Gatsby’s dreams that “beat on boats against the current”. Then there is the famous last line that draws the reader into the novel to affect the reader in profound ways,” So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”. Life is uncertain, with no particular path that is predetermined, and by using the work we, Fitzgerald involves our lives with that of Gatsby’s, and life’s uncertainties and our pursuit of redoing or fixing something from our past. There is an absence of religion within the characters of The Great Gatsby. But Fitzgerald still imposes the image of god within the novel with the giant eyes of the billboard. He writes “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 nonexistent nose” (p. 27). The yellow spectacles are representing corruption and greed and the watchful eyes of god. He hammers the image down in chapter VII when Wilson looks out at the giant spectacles

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