What Does The Color Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

The Symbolism of Colors in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby Color has been known to carry emotion. It has the power to make us feel warm or cool, eerie or pleasant. F. Scott Fitzgerald does just that in one of the greatest pieces of literature out there, The Great Gatsby. He manages to capture a variety of different essences and takes us with the characters in the downward spiral that is The Great Gatsby. In physics, a color is a visible light with a specific wavelength. Black and white are not colors because they do not have specific wavelengths. Instead white light contains all wavelengths of visible light. White is generally used to represent purity, innocence, and new beginnings. In chapter 1, page 19, Daisy states while speaking to Nick, “From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white–.” Daisy and Jordan’s childhoods crossed paths with their purity, free of obscenities, and complete with innocence. Essentially, they both had safe beginnings with corrupted ends.
But “money” is almost guaranteed to come up when the color “green” is mentioned. Money and lavish materials, and sometimes even luck, can be associated with “green”. Nick says on page 21, in chapter 1, “Involuntarily I glanced seaward– and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been at the end of a dock.” This was when Nick spotted Gatsby with outstretched arms at the dock reaching toward the light. The light symbolized Daisy and how she was just across the bay. Her old money roots planted there and Gatsby’s never ending hope to have her once again. The light came up in conversation again when Gatsby and Daisy reunited and how he longed for her to be