In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald employs the use of symbols to enhance a. It makes the characters determined to achieve more. The setting creates a gloomy and depressing tone. Word choice helps emphasize the impact of the setting. No one really wants.
In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald,the author uses The Valley of Ashes as a symbol of the tragedy of the middle class, death, and hell in order to show that the poor citizens of America live a tragic life. The reader is first introduced to the dirty, impoverished Valley of Ashes when Tom Buchanan brings the narrator Nick Carraway to meet his mistress, and is later used as a setting of tragedy.
Nick first arrives in the Valley of Ashes when Tom forces him to meet Myrtle, his mistress. In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, symbolism plays a major role in the continuation of the plot. The valley of ashes is only the most obvious site of decay in the novel. In reality, all of the places show signs of rot and decomposition which underpins the seemingly glittering lifestyle of the rich characters.
The whole place might as well have barbed wire around it for how easy it is to escape. Revisit Chapter 2 , Chapter 4 , and Chapter 8 to see the context surrounding mentions of the valley and its ash heaps. You can even explore why the valley of ashes almost made it into the title of the novel here. Consider the characters of George and Myrtle Wilson to understand why he succumbs to the ash heaps and she rises above them. You can also read about all the other symbols in The Great Gatsby.
While the Valley of Ashes is all about imagery and tone words , there are several other l iterary elements at play in The Great Gatsby. Learn how to spot personification and rhetorical devices in action with our guides. Read up on assonance , iambic pentameter , and point of view. We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score.
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A Comprehensive Guide. Choose Your Test. Posted by Dr. Anna Wulick Jan 13, AM. Quick Note on Our Citations Our citation format in this guide is chapter. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight… The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour.
Anna Wulick. About the Author. Search the Blog Search. Find Out How. It is the home of the poverty-stricken and underprivileged. It stands for social decay and acts as a wasteland to show the disregard of the wealthy over the destruction they cause in their pursuit of happiness. It is the location of many terrible and immoral plot events. The rhetorical devices used in F. This reveals the reality that many Americans experience while attempting to attain their dreams due to the hardships they encounter.
He recurringly uses color symbolism to amplify the central message: living in the past results in fatal failure. Both Myrtle Wilson and Jay Gatsby became victims of American society, in both different and similar ways.
Myrtle Wilson died for directly opposing the class system. Gatsby died for opposing the class system as well, but his death reveals something subtler, a fundamental flaw, in that no one can get ahead no matter how much they try, for any efforts to change life are doomed from the start.
Throughout the whole book, Fitzgerald tells us that the American Dream must be wrong, that there can be no hope until we change society, and that the inherently unfair social class system is the real problem underpinning the…. Giving that up, it would truly make her dead, thus why she is choking on it, trying to hold it inside her. Neither of them thinks about it, they are unable to admire and enjoy their own money parading in front of them. Order My Unique Sample. Another prominent aspect of the Valley of Ashes and, possibly, the only bright spark in it, is the giant advertisement board of the optometry with the disembodied blue eyes looking down to all the Valley.
The board is miraculously not covered by ash like everything around. This image is very powerfully described by the author and all the readers will definitely remember it.
But why the author placed it here? The literature experts support two major versions: the coloured eyes represent the world of the riches — the people who can be bright and beautiful, who will always look at the dwellers of the Valley from above.
They are too high to reach, almost in Heavens — but if someone climbs as high as Gatsby did they will see that these people are fake, flat and shallow like the advertisement board with a pretty picture on it. Another version, that is much more popular, that these blue eyes that lack the rest of the body, represent God Himself.
To be colorful is a privilege of the riches. When we see Tom talking to the Wilson, we see this contrast in all its ugly sharpness. Tom is loud and colorful, lively and falsely enjoying the meeting. He occupies all the space, just staying calmly.
Wilson, on the contrary, lacks colors. His voice is as dull as the rest of his appearance. But when we see his wife Myrtle, clearly showing her affection towards Tom, we have a different feeling.
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