Motifs, Motifs, Motifs

1. Motifs, Motifs, Motifs

2. Colors • Yellow- wealth and corruption • All Wilson can think about is “the yellow-car” that killed his wife. • the “yellow trolley”-track curved and going away from the sun • Gatsby “disappeared among the yellowing trees” to go to his pool…never to return alive • Blue- hope, fantasy • -“…among the blue leaves. There was a slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely wind, promising a cool, lovely day.” • “a blue quickening in the window…dawn wasn’t far off” • The blue eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg-higher world from which God looks down upon the scene-more hope • Tom’s blue car he dangles in front of Wilson=hope for Wilson (even if it is empty) • White- purity • Daisy Fay’s white car that Gatsby always remembers when thinking of her. This is the purity of the old Daisy Fay. However, this vanishes in her life as Daisy Buchanan; Gatsby just can’t see it through his dream that is constantly clouding his vision. • Pink- love for Daisy • “his gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of color against the white steps”

3. “Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.”--- “wealth imprisons and preserves” “a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust.” The “braided-silver” dog-leash Wilson’s “faded eyes” The “pale magic of [Daisy’s] face” “At a gray tea hour” The Valley of Ashes & use of Dust Silver and Gold vs Gray “…we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with gray-turning, gold-turning light.”

4. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” • “There was an inexplicable amount of dust everywhere…” • Daisy’s slippers “shuffling the shining dust” • “When I passed the ashheaps on the train that morning I had crossed deliberately to the other side of the car.” • “Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small gray clouds took on fantastic shapes and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind.”

5. Ghosts • “ghostly piano” • image of him searching through darkness • “The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves.” • “A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about…like that ashen fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.”

6. “Bigness” • “His house never seemed so enormous to me as it did that night…” • “…curtains like pavilions” • “innumerable feet of dark wall” • “He knew he was in Daisy’s house by a colossal accident.” • Eyes of T.J. Eckleberg-“pale and enormous” … “God sees everything”

7. Flowers “…romances that were not musty,… but fresh and breathing and redolent…of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered.” • Orchid –love, luxury, beauty • “[Daisy’s] artificial world was redolent of orchids” • “An evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed” • The Rose –love and passion • “Fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor.” • “…he found what a grotesque thing a rose is”

8. Daisy • White flower with a center of yellow.  • The white pedals- the purity that Gatsby sees- the white car of her youth • The true colors of Daisy: • The center is yellow- the core of Daisy is full of corruption • the yellow car that kills Myrtle • “her voice was full of money” • Not as pure as she seems on the outside • Once she kills Myrtle with the car her true recklessness is seen and her purity vanishes…but does it ever for Gatsby?

9. Weather • “There was a slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool, lovely day.” • Why so pleasant on the day of Gatsby’s death? • “the night had made a sharp difference in the weather and there was an autumn flavor in the air.” • The feeling of fall and the coming of death…

10. Symbolism of Gatsby’s death • It is the first day of autumn, meaning that summer (Gatsby’s time with Daisy) is over. • However, Gatsby doesn’t want his pool drained. Symbolically, he will not admit that the summer and his time with Daisy Fay is over. His time with Daisy is in the past as un-relivable time. • He is trying to stop time as he drifts in the pool. This is when he dies, still thinking he can stop time and relive the past, not believing that he had ever lost his dream. • It is another symbolic attempt to stop time and restore his relationship with Daisy to the way that is was the summer he met her. However, whether he likes it or not, the seasons change and time moves on.

11. “I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If it was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long in a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sun light was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about…like that ashen fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.” -161