The Powerful Use Of The Color Green - Web Poster Wizard

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The Powerful Use of the Color Green Motivations of Love and Money Money Money MoneyDescription: Money Money MoneyImage copyright: Google Image
ContIt is arguable that Jay Gatsby values two things above all others—love (particularly his love for Daisy Buchanon) and money (the means by which he hopes to win Daisy’s heart). The two motivations converge in Fitzgerald’s use of the color green, a symbol that represents both love and money as well as Gatsby’s ultimate goal—a spring-like renewal that would put his past behind him and plant the seeds for a future with Daisy. Fitzgerald shows green in its many incarnations, from the promise of a new bud to the decay of a stagnant pond, as Gatsby’s dream progresses from a dim light in the distance to the reality of lovely illusions left in ruins. Our first glimpse of green in the novel comes in the first chapter, as Nick stumbles upon Gatsby with his arms outstretched toward “a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock” (21). The light marks the end of the Buchanons’ pier, and the beginning of Gatsby’s green hope. He stands, stares and reaches out to the light as if reaching out to Daisy herself. At this point, even with all the money and power at his disposal, he can’t directly address the object of his affection; the light represents what could have been and what could be. By chapter 4, green takes the recognizable form of money, or at least the things money can buy. As described by Nick, the car is cream-colored and bright. The upholstery, however, the car’s center and the point at which is connects with the people inside, is a deep green, “a sort of green leather conservatory” (64). What better than a “green leather conservatory” for watching stars, particularly the bright green star across the bay? Even Gatsby’s car is a reminder of Daisy, and of her place in his universe. He buys the car to impress her if he can, and the green leather interior is a nod to decadent consumption as well as a symbol of the evolution Gatsby must undergo to make his dream a reality. The color green’s connection to nature, growth and renewal first appears in chapter 5 as Nick prepares for Gatsby and Daisy’s rendezvous at his house. Gatsby not only sends flowers to impress Daisy, he has a “greenhouse” shipped in (84). The word “greenhouse” suggests incubation, like the love Gatsby has let incubate as he built his fortune. Having convinced Daisy to meet with him, Gatsby wants her surrounded with fresh greenery to symbolize the renewed love he hopes their interlude will inspire. A few pages later, as Gatsby dazzles Daisy with his freshly laundered seasonal shirts, Fitzgerald slips in an apple-green one. This lighter green foreshadows a crucial light green later in the novel, and alludes to the Adam and Eve story in the Bible. Perhaps Fitzgerald wants us to see Daisy as an Eve figure, tempting Gatsby back in Louisville to bite the apple that led to his criminal activities, opening him up to decadence and deceit in the name of love. Also, the green of money (the expensive shirts), the green of renewal (the apple), and the green promise at the end of Daisy’s pier coincide in this brief but important scene. (92) Immediately following the apple reference, Gatsby tells Daisy that he has been watching the light at the end of the dock. He has Daisy in his hands, literally, and he reconsiders his attachment to the light. From here the color green begins to take on a different cast as Fitzgerald shows us the underside of love, money and renewal. Compared to the physical presence of Daisy, Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever.… It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one. (93) Green is no longer an enchanted color for Gatsby, and Fitzgerald’s references change accordingly. “Now it was again a green light on a dock” today might read, “Now it was nothing more than a green light on a dock.” Reality shows itself, and for that moment, the reality is what Gatsby has been seeking since his own transformation years earlier. Tom accompanies Daisy to one of Gatsby’s parties in chapter 6. Daisy’s attitude has already changed; she tells Nick she is passing out green cards for kisses. Why are the cards green? Perhaps to celebrate her own small renewal—the beginning of a new relationship with Jay Gatsby and his fortune. Green cards suggest green paper—dollars, perhaps—and Fitzgerald seems to be saying that Daisy may be willing to trade her love for money. In the end, after all, she chooses the stability of Tom’s “old money” to Gatsby’s “new money,” in a sense preferring the security of a more comfortable faded green than the possibility of a brighter, more ambitious green. The birth of love and the death of love can both be represented by the color green, and Fitzgerald seems to be suggesting that they are intertwined as he moves toward the end of the novel. In a brief reference in chapter 7, George Wilson, suffering from both the heat and from suspicion of his wife’s infidelity, gasses up Tom’s car. Fitzgerald tells us, “In the sunlight his face was green” (123). Wilson is literally sickened by his situation, and the destruction of his marriage cascades into the novel’s other relationships. By the end of the book, everyone’s face is figuratively as green as George’s. George’s wife Myrtle is killed later in chapter 7, and the first thing Michaelis, the Wilsons’ neighbor, tells the police is that the “death car” is light green. Later reports suggest a blue or yellow car. Just as yellow and blue make green, Myrtle’s blood mingles with the dust in the Valley of Ashes (137). Fitzgerald breaks green down into its component colors cleverly, possibly suggesting that the other couplings in the novel are as tainted as Myrtle’s blood in the road. This blurring takes the pinpoint of green light in chapter 1 and stretches it into a world that has no place for it, one in which the purity suggested by the light must coexist with darker forces. By Fitzgerald’s reckoning, there is no purity in the world of the Jazz Age; the green light is a symbol not only of the past, but of a past that may never have existed, both in Gatsby’s life and in American life in general. In the last paragraph of the novel, as in chapter 1, the green light appears, bringing the symbolism full circle. Nick says Gatsby “believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (180). With the events of the novel behind him, Nick reiterates the fact that the light Gatsby counted on and followed was, as Gatsby saw in chapter 5, no more than a green light. Gatsby invests a great deal of hope and love in the color green throughout the novel; at the end green is simply green, as magical and powerful as Gatsby’s apple-green shirts, which can’t hold Daisy’s interest long enough to make her stay. Fitzgerald’s use of the color green in The Great Gatsby reflects the arc of Gatsby’s dream—in the beginning it is fresh, bursting with desire and imagination as if his dream were a newly blossoming flower. As reality sets in—the irritants of attitude and deceit and the collision of damaged lives—the green fades, or it weathers like a sick face. Finally, the same bright green of the past becomes no more than a memory, and not necessarily a clear one. Gatsby’s green hope rests on the light at the end of Daisy’s dock more than the reality of Daisy, past or present. She proves herself to be not the fulfillment of his dream, but as elusive and uncertain as the flickering green glow barely visible across an expanse of water. Gatsby dies pursuing that light, blinding himself to the other colors that exist all around him. Links: Bullet Recurring Images
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