What does the Valley of Ashes Symbolize in “The Great Gatsby” by Fitzgerald

Introduction

Close your eyes, and let’s dream back to the ages of shimmer, shine, and fine wine of the jazz age. Fitzgerald is the name author of “The Great Gatsby,” born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in eighteen-ninety-six. He attended Princeton University and published his first novel in nineteen-twenty. In the year of nineteen-twenty, he married the love of his life Zelda Sayre.

Theme of Wealth and Materialism

Fitzgerald was a major new literary voice and wrote many masterpieces. At the age of forty-four, he died of a heart attack in ninety-forty while working on another piece, “The Love of The Last Tycoon.

” He plays one of the most important roles during the nineteen ninety’s as an American writer of the twentieth century. “The Great Gatsby” was about the age of jazz, fun, and partying of the ninety-twenties. This novel gave themes of wealth, materialism, and love, and that reminds me of money over matter, love just to distrust, and having an imagination beyond wonders.

In “The Great Gatsby,” the theme of wealth and materialism is evident in the setting illustrated by Fitzgerald. Wealth plays a huge role because money doesn’t have value to it, but it may not necessarily make people happy. As we read, we readers start to get a negative impression of the upper class as judgmental and “uppity.” Gatsby, on the other hand, is neither judgmental nor uppity but has money and spends large amounts of it on holding parties but doesn’t enjoy them. Wealth can make people careless as per se like Tom and Daisy, who think that money can protect them forever. Although Myrtle feels as if money can enhance the quality of her lifestyle, she does so by having an affair with Tom. After all, money can’t buy happiness or love.

Symbolism in “The Great Gatsby”

Everything always symbolizes something in life, and in “The Great Gatsby,” there are three main symbols. The Green Light foreshadows Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future, and Gatsby associates it with Daisy, but that all changes for the worst. The colors we associate with are money, growth, and regeneration, but for Gatsby, the green light is different; it makes him ‘tremble.” The green light reminds him of Daisy. She is an illusion of new beginnings, love, longing, and desire.

The Valley of Ashes between West Egg and New York City represents the moral and social decay that results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, in which the rich indulge themselves with regard to nothing but their own pleasure. Not only does the Valley of Ashes represents the rich, but it also symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George Wilson, who lived amongst the dirty ashes and lost their vivacity as a person.

The last symbol is The Eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, which is plastered with a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They stand for God staring down upon and judging American society as a land full of wasted morals, even though this point isn’t made directly in the novel. “God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God!”(Wilson, pg.159) This quote shows how characters in the story believed that the eyes were God watching them, and most of George mostly had thought it was because the eyes, for some reason to them, showed something that could see nobody else could. These symbols are important to have in this story because it gives a better, deeper and better understanding of what is going on.

Conclusion

In conclusion, “The Great Gatsby” brings different themes and ties them into one. This novel has many symbols that stand for different things, but each one represents some of the characters’ lives in different ways. Not only does it show many symbols, but it also shows the difficulties of love, wealth, and materialism of each character and how each character wanted to live the best life they could. Many of the characters came from poor and broken homes, and later in life, they succeeded on their own Gatsby, for instance, was poor during the time dating Daisy, and when he left and came back, he was more successful than before living in a mansion and driving fancy cars, but the only thing he is missing is Daisy by his side. Myrtle looks for a way to better her lifestyle by having an affair with Tom even with Daisy being married to Tom; along with that, Daisy is stuck in a love triangle of who she wants between Tom and Gatsby, who “has her heart?”

References

1. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925.
2. Wilson, George. The Great Gatsby. Character quote from the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, page 159.

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