Sensory details are essential tools for any author hoping to effectively impact the reader. Blue can represent a sense of melancholy; green the greed of snide businessmen; red evokes passion or anger. Then there is white. The simplest color, I suppose, white is used primarily by authors to mark a sense of innocence, untainted. As such, color accounts for some of the richest description in Fitzgerald's work. This is especially true of The Great Gatsby, where the colors green, yellow, and white are constant reminders of the author's motive. Fitzgerald employed an array of colors that would both capture and ostracize the characters within their setting, creating a dramatic irony that is partially the reason The Great Gatsby is so highly regarded in the literary world.
Of all the colors in Fitzgerald's arsenal, white plays such a peculiar role. Its importance to understanding the symbolism and themes of the novel cannot be disregarded. Fitzgerald uses white as early as page thirteen, in describing Nick's first encounter with Jordan and Daisy. "They were both in white." It can be seen that Fitzgerald is trying to connect the color white to upper class socialites surrounding Nick on his trip to New York. White is especially close to the central characters of Nick, Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, the latter being Nick's second cousin and the apple of the Jay's eye.
For parts of the novel, white represents a sort of innocence and honesty. Nick considers himself to be the only honest person he knows, and is often seen wearing white, including the first part of Gatsby's which he attends. Daisy had a "white girlhood" and the windows to her house are white. Gatsby wears a white flannel suit in his first meeting with Daisy after five years of being apart. All of the characters are aware of the pure and honest vibe that the color white gives off, and so is Fitzgerald.
This is how color adds such depth to The Great Gatsby. The individuals wearing white (Gatsby, Jordan, Daisy) are all morally corrupt characters at times. Jordan cheats in the golf tournament; Daisy is having an affair; Gatsby has gained his extraordinary wealth through illegal means. So what the reader ends up with is the juxtaposition of who these characters are and who they are portraying. This plays very heavily into the world Fitzgerald is creating. It is a day and age where perception and image are worth more than actual character. White is acting like a barrier between the purity these characters seek to show others and the impurities of their lives.
It is not a particularly difficult way to add depth to a novel, but the benefits of using color in The Great Gatsby speak to the importance of sensory details. We see colors; we see characters. With first impressions we are only given the surface, and from its swirls of color must determine who a person is. To see Fitzgerald's morally bankrupt characters (with the rare exception of Nick) parading around is white speaks to the old adage that pictures really do speak a thousand words.
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Matthew J. Bruccoli. The Great Gatsby. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. Print.
Image courtesy of:http://blog.pappastax.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/great-gatsby.bmp
No comments:
Post a Comment