Corruption
The moral decay beneath glittering surfaces
American Dream
Hope, ambition, and its fatal distortion
Symbolism
Colour, geography, and the gaze of God
Illusion
Performance, façade, and the theatrical self
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby operates on multiple registers simultaneously — as social critique, as romantic tragedy, and as a sustained meditation on the gap between appearance and reality in American life. These essay notes trace six thematic points across the novel's key symbols, settings, and characters.
Point One: West Egg vs. East Egg
The difference between the Eggs and Daisy's reaction to West Egg indicate the corrupt nature of American society and the American Dream.
Key Quotations
"West Egg, the – well, the less fashionable of the two"
"It was a factual imitation"
"But the rest offended her…she was appalled by West Egg"
The Two Worlds
Each setting in the novel corresponds to a particular thematic idea or character type. Though each Egg is home to fabulous wealth, and though they are separated only by a small expanse of water, the two regions are nearly opposite in the values they endorse.
- East Egg: breeding, taste, aristocracy, and leisure — associated with the Buchanans and the monotony of inherited social position
- West Egg: ostentation, garishness, and the flashy manners of the new rich — associated with Gatsby's gaudy mansion and the inner drive behind his self-made fortune
The Buchanans: Surface vs. Reality
In the world of East Egg, alluring appearances serve to cover unattractive realities. The marriage of Tom and Daisy Buchanan seems menaced by a quiet desperation beneath its pleasant surface. Tom is arrogant and dishonest, advancing racist arguments at dinner and carrying on relatively public love affairs.
Daisy and Jordan: Glamour Over Emptiness
Daisy tries hard to be shallow, even going so far as to say she hopes her baby daughter will turn out to be a fool, because women live best as beautiful fools. Jordan Baker furthers the sense of sophisticated fatigue: her cynicism, boredom, and dishonesty are at sharp odds with her wealth and beauty.
The Fault Line of Catastrophe
The unworkable intersection of the two Eggs in the romance between Gatsby and Daisy will serve as the fault line of catastrophe. As with the Buchanans' marriage, Jordan's surface glamour covers up an inner emptiness — a pattern that runs through every character associated with East Egg.
Point Two: Gatsby's Illusion
The Owl-Eyed man reveals that Jay Gatsby is an illusion — and in the hotel scene, this illusion comes crashing down and the façade of Jay Gatsby is torn apart.
The Theatrical Self
One of Gatsby's guests, Owl Eyes, is surprised to find that his books are real and not just empty covers designed to create the appearance of a great library. At the party, as he looks through Gatsby's books, Owl Eyes states that Gatsby has captured the effect of theater — a kind of mingling of honesty and dishonesty that characterises Gatsby's approach to this dimension of his life.
"What realism! Knew when to stop too – didn't cut the pages"
The party itself is a kind of elaborate theatrical presentation, and Owl Eyes suggests that Gatsby's whole life is merely a show, believing that even his books might not be real.
The Collapse of the Façade
The tone of Nick's narration suggests that many of the inhabitants of East Egg and West Egg use an outward show of opulence to cover up their inner corruption and moral decay. But Gatsby seems to use his opulence to mask something entirely different and perhaps more profound.
"he looked as if he had 'killed a man'. For a moment the set of his face could be described in just that fantastic way"
In the hotel confrontation, the constructed identity of Jay Gatsby — the name, the parties, the shirts, the accent — is stripped away under pressure, revealing the void at the centre of his self-invention.
Point Three: Doctor T. J. Eckleburg's Eyes
Symbol of Divine Judgement Over Moral Wasteland
The Symbol
The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They may represent God staring down upon and judging American society as a moral wasteland, though the novel never makes this point explicitly.
"brood on over the solemn dumping ground."
Interpretive Ambiguity
The undefined significance of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg's monstrous, bespectacled eyes gazing down from their billboard makes them troubling to the reader. In Chapter 2, Fitzgerald preserves their mystery, giving them no fixed symbolic value.
Perhaps the most persuasive reading of the eyes at this point in the novel is that they represent the eyes of God, staring down at the moral decay of the 1920s. The faded paint of the eyes can be seen as symbolising the extent to which humanity has lost its connection to God.
This reading, however, is merely suggested by the arrangement of the novel's symbols; Nick does not directly explain the symbol in this way, leaving the reader to interpret it. The eyes watch — but they do not intervene.
Divine Surveillance
God-like gaze over a society that has abandoned moral order in favour of material accumulation
Faded Faith
The peeling paint signals humanity's eroded connection to spiritual values in the Jazz Age
Commercial Irony
An advertisement — not a deity — now occupies the position of moral authority in American life
Point Four: The Valley of Ashes
A place devoid of hope and abandoned by the American Dream — the valley of ashes represents the moral and social decay of the US, and the pursuit of wealth and pleasure as the corruption of that Dream.
"A line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track…immediately the ash grey men swarm up…"
"There was an inexplicable amount of dust everywhere"
The Setting as Moral Mirror
First introduced in Chapter 2, the valley of ashes between West Egg and New York City consists of a long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes. It represents the moral and social decay that results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves with regard for nothing but their own pleasure.
The setting is used to mirror the corruption and disregard for those who suffer the consequences. These grey men are the by-products of the American Dream — the victims of bosses who commute through the area on the way to Wall Street.
George Wilson: The Human Cost
The valley of ashes also symbolises the plight of the poor, like George Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.
"When anyone spoke to him he invariably laughed in an agreeable colorless way"
Wilson's face is "ashen," and a "white ashen dust" covers his suit. His eyes are described as "pale" and "glazed." Every physical detail of Wilson's description mirrors the landscape he inhabits — he has been consumed by the ash, rendered colourless and inert by a society that has no use for him.
Industrial Waste
Created by the dumping of industrial ashes — the literal residue of the wealthy economy that surrounds it
Social Exclusion
The poor are trapped here while the rich pass through on their way to pleasure — geography as class stratification
Moral Decay
The uninhibited pursuit of wealth produces this wasteland — the Dream's dark underside made visible
Point Five: Colour
Colour is used throughout the novel to demonstrate the destructive pursuit of money. Gatsby's parties are full of colour; Daisy and Jordan wear white; the Valley of Ashes is grey and lifeless.
Gold and Yellow
Yellows and golds represent the authentic, traditional, "old money" — not "new money." So you have Gatsby's party, where the turkeys are "bewitched to dark gold," and Jordan's "slender golden arm[s]", and Daisy the "golden girl", and Gatsby wearing a gold tie to see Daisy at Nick's house.
But yellow is different. Yellow is fake gold; it's veneer and show rather than substance. We see that with the "yellow cocktail music" at Gatsby's party and the "two girls in twin yellow dresses" who aren't as alluring as the golden Jordan. Also yellow? Gatsby's car, symbol of his desire — and failure — to enter New York's high society. And T. J. Eckleburg's glasses, looking over the wasteland of America, are yellow.
White
Daisy's car (back before she was married) was white. So are her clothes, the rooms of her house, and about half the adjectives used to describe her — her "white neck," "white girlhood," the king's daughter "high in a white palace."
Everyone likes to say that white in The Great Gatsby means innocence — but Daisy is hardly the picture of girlish innocence. At the end of the novel, she's described as selfish, careless, and destructive. Does this make the point that even the purest characters in Gatsby have been corrupted? Did Daisy start off innocent and fall along the way, or was there no such purity to begin with?
Gold
Authentic wealth, inherited status, genuine aristocracy
Yellow
Fake gold — veneer, show, new money, moral corruption
White
Apparent innocence — but concealing emptiness or corruption beneath
Grey
The Valley of Ashes — lifelessness, exclusion, the Dream's victims
Point Six: The Green Light
The green light represents the American Dream — a symbol of hope, but one ruined by the unworthiness of its object: money and pleasure. Gatsby was striving for it, but it is clear to the reader that it is false and unattainable.
"he stretched his arms toward the dark water…distinguished nothing except a single green light"
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us"
The Colour's Resonance
Green seems the most striking colour employed: it carries religious overtones of cardinal sin (envy); sensations of potential fruitfulness or growth as the colour of spring; the obvious interpretation of jealousy; and, as the colour of the dollar, a sense of purely material richness.
Gatsby needs money in order for his quest for Daisy to have any hope of realistic achievement. It is therefore significant that she, the woman of his dreams, lives across the Sound beyond the 'green light at the end of the dock'.
The Dream Made Flesh
Fitzgerald complements this at the end of the novel by using the colour green in association with America's tragic desire to bind together its growth as a nation, its national destiny, with acquisitiveness. The Dutch settlers, like Gatsby with his green light, saw the 'green breast' and attempted to possess it.
Gatsby, then, is simply an incarnation of the American 'dream made flesh' by the Jazz Age and the pre-Wall Street crash optimism of the early 1920s. The fact that the green light 'year by year recedes before us' demonstrates that the American Dream as a force is at once continually fresh and inspiring yet unfulfilling. It remains 'out there' somewhere — and it leads us backwards morally because it is based essentially on economic lust.
Envy / Cardinal Sin
Green carries religious overtones of sin — the Dream is morally compromised at its root
Growth / Spring
The colour of potential and renewal — the Dream's seductive promise of a fresh start
The Dollar
Material richness — the Dream collapsed into pure acquisitiveness and economic lust
Conclusion
The Dream's Dual Nature
The fact that the green light 'year by year recedes before us' demonstrates that the American Dream as a force is at once continually fresh and inspiring yet unfulfilling. It remains 'out there' somewhere — and it leads us backwards morally because it is based essentially on economic lust.
Gatsby's failure does not prove the folly of the American Dream — rather it proves the folly of short-cutting that dream by allowing corruption and materialism to prevail over hard work, integrity, and real love.
Gatsby as Symbol
Gatsby symbolises both the corrupted Dream and the original uncorrupted Dream. He sees wealth as the solution to his problems, pursues money via shady schemes, and reinvents himself so much that he becomes hollow, disconnected from his past. Yet Gatsby's corrupt dream of wealth is motivated by an incorruptible love for Daisy.
And the dream of love that remains at Gatsby's core condemns nearly every other character in the novel, all of whom are empty beyond just their lust for money.
West Egg vs. East Egg
Geography as moral stratification — new money vs. old, ostentation vs. breeding, the fault line of catastrophe
Gatsby's Illusion
The theatrical self — a life of performance that collapses under the weight of reality in the hotel scene
Eckleburg's Eyes
The faded gaze of a commercialised God over a society that has abandoned moral order
Valley of Ashes
The Dream's human cost — the grey, ashen victims of a society that passes through without looking down
Colour
Gold vs. yellow, white as false innocence, grey as exclusion — a chromatic map of moral corruption
The Green Light
Hope, envy, and the dollar — the Dream as a force that is always receding, always inspiring, always corrupting
Corruption, the American Dream, Symbolism, and Illusion in The Great Gatsby