What Gray Has To Say
In. F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, the color gray is represented in how the characters perceive the world in which they live in, particularly Nick Carraway, who views society and his city quite phenomenally.
"I looked at Miss Baker... her gray sun-stained eyes looked back at me with a polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face" (11).
Daisy's grey eyes tell the reader that she may have some story that she may be hiding. Her grey eyes also show that it is saddening, grieving, or depressing.
"This is a valley of ashes--a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track...the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud..."(23).
The Valley of Ashes is an important aspect of the novel, The Great Gatsby, because it emphasizes on the lifestyle differences between the grey-stricken working class and the golden wealthy. The ashes and everything that is covered in it like the houses and cars shows us that the working class has learned to accept the gloomy way in which they live in. "The ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades" because they have less hope of migrating to the golden world of the wealthy and that is why their world is so grey and "dimly lit."
"But above the gray land and the spasm of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it..."(23).
Even though the working class contributes to the success of the working city, their work is forgotten behind "the spasm of bleak dust" that the wealthy do not bother to acknowledge. The Valley of Ashes is where all the residue of the wealthy has unfortunately been assumed and forgotten. The wealthy having bigger and better things to do have the working class live with their careless actions. The working class has no choice because it is the only way they can get by in the 1920's society.
"A White ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in his vicinity--except his wife who moved close to Tom"(26).
The mechanic, Wilson, whom Tom was talking to, is described as a grey character because he lives and works in the Valley of Ashes. His wife however, also living in the Valley of Ashes, is excluded from the greyness and ash covered town because she thrives to live in the colorful wealthy class. By having an affair with Tom, she goes against her grey world and tries to embody herself into the colorful world of the wealthy.
"It was a few days before the Fourth of July, ans a gray, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track"(26).
This adds to the fact that everyone in the Valley of Ashes, including the "scrawny" children are affected by all the ashes and pollution in which they have to grow up in. The children are malnourished and probably not in good health due to the conditions in which the wealthy enforce on them. The torpedoes that the child is setting up shows his yearning for color and light in his town. With these fireworks he can have a little joy.
"We backed up to a gray old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John D. Rockefeller"(27).
John D. Rockefeller, a wealthy man, is being compared to a "gray old man". However, this old man would seem to have no importance in society. It seems that as the people age, they lose their value and become less important, which is why this man, who may have been rich in his younger years, is now being described as gray.
"We talked for a moment about some wet, gray little villages in France."(47).
When Nick and Gatsby meet, they talk about their travels in France and their experiences in war. While serving in the World War I, they were stationed in a small village in France. It was an unpleasant experience for both of them, and they were not yet as wealthy as they are now. In those villages in France, Gatsby lived as if he were in the Valley of Ashes, being unimportant.
"Her gray, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her"(58).
Here Daisy professes that she is interested in Nick as maybe more than a friend, while still being in an attitude of sombre grey. Yet, Nick still views and thinks of her as the girl of his dreams and takes this statement like the next step to their relationship.
" But I can still read the gray names, and they will give you a better impression than my generalities of those who accepted Gatsby's hospitality and paid him in subtle tribute of knowing nothing whatever about him"(61).
These gray names that Nick read are gray because they are too many of them and so few of them actually repaid Gatsby for his help. They are sad people, melancholy and down-set. They are seen as unimportant because they chose to "repay" Gatsby by spreading false and critical rumors about him. This is rude and quite unacceptable, especially since the wealthy class thinks of themselves as superior and at right with everything.
"He flipped a switch. The gray windows disappeared as the house glowed full of light"(94).
This quote adds to the fact that people generally don't want to be tucked away in a dusty grey world; they want to a part of the bright lights and colors that life so generously throws at them. When Gatsby turned on the lights, it showed that he is a party person and wants there to be no discontent among his guests whatsoever; this is highly unrealistic, but due to Gatsby's unfavorable childhood, he wants everything to as bright as he can get it to be.
"I remember the portrait of him in Gatsby's bedroom, a gray, florid man with a hard, empty face..."(100).
Nick remembers the portrait of Gatsby's friend, Cody, as a man of great wealth but of many problems. He is depicted as a gray man because for most of his life he was while he was rich he spent most of his time drinking, or in quarrel with his selfish wife, Ella Kaye. Cody, even though he was wealthy and lived a life of extravagances, died an unjust death; he also died without his will properly taken care of, in which Gatsby was to inherit money from his friend Cody. Cody's lifestyle shows the reader that even the rich and famous are prone to having grey moments.
"A breeze stirred the gray haze of Daisy's fur collar"(108).
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Daisy, surrounded with all of her wealth, still is unsatisfied; she feels incomplete because she doesn't have the fundamental things in life, like love and respect. Yet Daisy doesn't quite realize this, so entrapped by fame and beauty, which is why her clothes, even though made of the best material, is gloomy and in a "gray haze."
"At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while faces drifted here and there...by the sad horns around the floor"(151).
During this time, when Daisy was still young and not yet married to Tom, she had a life of partying and carelessness; she didn't really have anything to work for or impress. Her days were spent aimlessly at the "gray hour of tea" because she is sadly watching everyone else around her move on in life, while she is planted to one spot, in the gray tea room. That is why when she met Tom, she felt like she had an initiative to do something, which helped swipe of the grayness in her life for a while.
"It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with gray-turning, gold-turning light"(152).
The house of a wealthy man is supposedly colorful and vivid. However, at Gatsby's house, the light comes and goes, making the house turn gray and gold. Gatsby was going through a rough time with his relationship with Daisy and dealing with his past. Like George Wilson, The gray light showed that Gatsby didn't always see the light ahead of him, but by being wealthy, there was sometimes some "gold-turning" light in his life.
"Wilson's glazed eyes turned out to the ash heaps, where small gray clouds took on fantastic shapes and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind"(159).
After Wilson's wife was killed, he was depressed. The "small gray clouds" are formed by the ashes, and the dust clings to Wilson and covers his clothes like his sadness. However, the "fantastic shapes" that the clouds form show that he is hoping for better times in the future. The "faint dawn wind" represents Wilson's lack of faith on Myrtle.
"A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dream like air, drifted fortuitously about...like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees"(161).
Gatsby feels like he is in a new world because he is starting anew with Daisy, but it is a dangerous, and he sees things as mysterious because he isn't sure about his own thoughts. The fog that Gatsby sees as ghosts and the shapeless trees limit his visibility and represents how he doesn't see a clear future with Daisy. The "fantastic figure" is Wilson, who Nick describes as lifeless and ghost-like, coming to kill Gatsby, and he blends in with the "ghosts" that he is seeing.
"It was Gatsby's father, a solemn old man, very helpless and dismayed...his eyes leaked continuously with excitement, and when I took the bag and umbrella from his hands he began to pull so incessantly at his sparse gray beard..."(167).
Gatsby's father, Mr. Gatz is a man flushed with prominent pride for his deceased son, saying that Gatsby would have been a great man had he lived longer and that he would have been up with the big ones. Gatsby's father seems to be clouded with grayness at the realization that his son is dead and even though they hardly spent time together, he will surely miss him and mourns for him. His gray beard adds on to the depressed and worn-out image that the author is trying to show.