The Great Gatsby Book Cover and Its Meaning

The Great Gatsby is full of symbolism, including its’ cover! Many people don’t understand the symbolism in the cover which really does bring some insight into the novel so, I thought I would dedicate a post to talk about the symbolism in the cover.

The eyes on the cover represent J.T. Eckleburg’s eyes on the billboard in the valley of ashes.  The irises of the eyes with nude women lounging in them represent Jay Gatsby’s views about and future with Daisy Buchanan. They also represent the wealthy, since this book strips away their outer shell and shows their true nature. The eyes and the lips also represent Daisy. The green tear represents the green light. And lastly, the blinding lights and signs represent the “roaring” 20’s and Jay Gatsby’s huge parties, just a big charade to get Daisy to love him again.

Figurative and Descriptive Language in The Great Gatsby

This is just a post dedicated to all of the great figurative and descriptive language in The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald is such a beautiful writer!

“I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”- Daisy

“He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.”- Nick

“The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.”- Nick

“That’s my Middle West . . . the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark. . . . I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.”- Nick

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”- Nick

“The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door…”- Nick

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”-Nick

“The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon.”-Nick

“Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth…”- Nick

“They are not perfect ovals-like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end….”- Nick

Symbolism in The Great Gatsby

          

There are three main uses of symbolism, that I found, in The Great Gatsby; the green light, the valley of ashes, and the eyes of J.T. Eckleburg.

The green light at the end of the Buchanan’s dock symbolizes Gatsby’s hopes and dreams of the future. This green light is associated with Daisy because she is the one thing that Gatsby wants and he only envisions a future where she is with him.

The valley of ashes symbolizes the social and moral decay of the pursuit of wealth, the rich don’t care about morals but of their of their own good and pleasure.

Lastly, the eyes of J.T. Eckleburg symbolize the eyes of God watching and judging American society. A few important events in the book happen right before J.T. Eckleburg’s eyes.

The Theme of The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is about the story of romance but, the deeper meaning of it is the decline of the American Dream, which took place in the 1920’s. After the war, the generation of young Americans who had fought had been disillusioned so, the old  social morals didn’t seem important anymore. The rise of the stock market increased which lead to increased wealth and a new materialism society. The American Dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness but was corrupted in the 1920’s by the easy wealth and the loose social values. This is what F. Scott Fitzgerald was trying to point out in The Great Gatsby.

Non-Fiction and The Great Gatsby

The book The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation, by Jim Cullen, connects to The Great Gatsby because it talks about the American Dream and it’s history and The Great Gatsby, not including the Old Money/New Money tension, is about the American Dream and, in Gatsby’s life, how it fails sometimes. I think reading this book would help you understand The Great Gatsby better.

The Charleston Dance

*watch video first*

This video of a 1920’s party where people are dancing and doing the Charleston really connects with The Great Gatsby because, in the book, Jay Gatsby has these huge, great parties where, I’m sure, that people did the Charleston and acted as wild as in this video. This video connected to the book because it really helped you visualize what parties and music would be like back in the 1920’s.

The Great Gatsby and Looking For Alaska

           

While writing my post about song connections, a few days ago, I was thinking about other fiction books and how they relate to The Great Gatsby. As I was thinking, I realized that the book, Looking For Alaska by John Green, is similar to The Great Gatsby. Here are my connections…

1. Both books are written in the past tense

In Looking For Alaska , Miles Halter, the main character, tells the story of how he met Chip and Alaska Young, just like the way Nick Carraway told the story of how he met Jay Gatsby and the Buchanans.

2. The characters in both books do illegal things

In The Great Gatsby, everyone drinks alcohol including Nick, Jordan, and the Buchanans despite it being during the time of the prohibition. In Looking For Alaska, Miles, Chip, Alaska, and a few other characters drink alcohol, despite being under 21 years old, and they take drugs.

*SPOILER ALERT*

3.One of the main characters in each book dies

In Looking For Alaska, Alaska dies in a car crash and in The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby gets shot by Wilson, a man who thought that Gatsby ran over and killed his wife, Myrtle, when it was actually Daisy Buchanan who ran over Myrtle.

 

Related articles

• Get Excited for The Great Gatsby (jnormanpost.com)
• Wisdom from the Great Gatsby: Accept Yourself and Cut through the Melodrama (bridefied.wordpress.com)
• Review: The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (laurasmusings.wordpress.com)
• ‘The Great Gatsby’, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and ‘The Hunger Games’, by Suzanne Collins (areytread.wordpress.com)

Connections Through Music

While reading The Great Gatsby, I have found three music connections, Oh No, Once Upon A December, and We Are Young.
First with the song Oh No by Marina and the Diamonds. I have found that the lyrics of this song fit the book.
Don’t do love, don’t do friends
I’m only after success
Gatsby doesn’t want any love or friends(maybe Nick) because he is trying to be successful, which is getting Daisy Buchanan to fall back in love with him.

One track mind, one track heart
If I fail, I’ll fall apart
Maybe it is all a test
Cause I feel like I’m the worst
So I always act like I’m the best
Gatsby is only focused on one thing, getting Daisy, and he thinks that if she doesn’t love him, his life is ruined. He also, throughout the book, doesn’t think he is good enough for her so he acts like he is the best, to try to win her over.
The second connection I made was with the song Once Upon a December which is from Anastastia, a kid movie.
Dancing bears, painted wings
Things I almost remember
And a song someone sings
Once upon a December

Someone holds me safe and warm
Horses prance through a silver storm
Figures dancing gracefully
Across my memory
I can almost see this song sung by Nick many years after and him reflecting on meeting Daisy and Gatsby, attending Gatsby’s parties. and all of the events that happened that summer.
Far away, long ago
Glowing dim as an ember
Things my heart used to know
Things it yearns to remember

And a song someone sings
Once upon a December
As Nick has grown older he has forgotten some things but, he will never forget the events and feelings he had felt on that fateful summer in 1922.

And lastly the song We Are Young by Fun.

Give me a second, I
I need to get my story straight
My friends are in the bathroom
Getting higher than the Empire State
My lover she is waiting for me
Just across the bar,

So Gatsby is talking to Nick about who he really is, despite all of the rumors going around. He mentions all of the people partying or getting high and he mentions Daisy, his lover across the bar.

 I know I gave it to you months ago
I know you’re trying to forget
But between the drinks and subtle things
And the holes in my apologies
You know I’m trying hard to take it back
So if by the time the bar closes
And you feel like falling down
I’ll carry you home

Tonight,
We are young
So let’s set the world on fire
We can burn brighter
Than the sun

Now Gatsby is talking to Daisy about their relationship before the war and how he left her in America and how he wants to make amends. The second paragraph of lyrics really reminded me of Gatsby’s wild parties and how everyone was so happy and carefree in the Jazz Age.

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Short Biography

First, before I start reading The Great Gatsby I thought I would start with a short biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author.

He was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota and published his first story in his school newspaper, when he was 13 years old. When Fitzgerald was 15, he was sent to the Newman School, a Catholic preparatory school and then after graduating, he went to Princeton University. In 1917, he dropped out and joined the army. He was commissioned as second lieutenant in his infantry and was assigned to Camp Sheridan in Alabama where he met  and fell in love with a beautiful 18 year old girl named Zelda Sayre. The war ended in 1919, and he was never deployed. In 1920, he wrote his first novel This Side of Paradise. This book received “glowing” reviews and, almost overnight, turned Fitzgerald into one of the country’s most promising young writers. One week after the novel’s publication, he married Zelda and had one child, a girl named Francis Scott Fitzgerald, born in 1921. F. Scott Fitzgerald eagerly embraced his new celebrity status and began to live an extravagant lifestyle that earned him a reputation as a playboy. Starting in 1920, he began to support himself financially by writing short stories for popular publications. In 1922, he published his second novel, The Beautiful and The Damned. For a chance to spark his creativity, in 1924, Scott moved to France and there, he wrote The Great Gatsby, in 1925. Although the book was well received when it was published, it was not until the 1950s and the 1960s that it achieved its stature of being one of the greatest American novels ever written. After The Great Gatsby was published, his life began to fall apart. He progressed steadily into alcoholism and Zelda returned to the U.S. in 1931 and entered the John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, because of her mental health issues. In 1934, he published his last novel, Tender Is The Night. In 1937, Fitzgerald attempted to revive his career as a screenwriter and story writer in Hollywood, and he achieved modest financial success for his efforts. He started work on another novel, The Love of The Last Tycoon, in 1939, and completed over half of the book when he died of a heart attack on December 21,1940 at the age of 44.