The Use of Color in “The Great Gatsby”

Color can make a powerful impact on the poem and significantly transform the characters’ purposes, shape personalities of the characters, symbols, scenes, the audience perceptions, and the meaning of even the smallest details in the story. In their stories, many authors strive to play with different colors in order to insist on certain symbolic features, literary undercontext, imagery, themes or the character’s motifs, intentions, or purposes. In The Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald uses different colors to insist on specific themes and underline his ideas and purposes in the story; the author mostly insists on green, white, yellow, and red colors to effectively depict the character’s feelings, intentions, inner features and traits, material things, social position, and symbols in the story. The green color is closely related to Gatsby that symbolizes his American dream and his powerful feelings, passion and love to Daisy. The author uses green light to insist on the deepest feelings and desires; “the green light appears throughout the whole novel makes the plot more complete and the theme more deep and profound” (Haibing, 41). The white color is all about Gatsby’s character; the author uses this “whiteness” to illustrate purity, Gatsby’s honest intentions, pure feelings, moral principles, and honorable appearance. Despite that red color is often associated with the theme of love, life, or strong feelings, many authors use this color to illustrate violence, cruelty, fear, or danger. Fitzgerald uses a lot of red color to illustrate Gatsby’s love, strong inner feelings, and passion to Daisy, and the corrupted nature of beauty that Gatsby faced with, which eventually led to tragic consequences. Yellow is the most common color associated with Gatsby’s character; in the story the yellow color associates with money, material things, and social positions; the yellow color helps the author to depict Gatsby’s intention to become wealthy, powerful, and independent.

In The Great Gatsby, all these colors help the writer to better illustrate Gatsby’s character, his inner perceptions, emotions, feelings, and intentions in life, and add the meaning this specific figure in the story.

Work cited:

Haibing, Zhang. “Symbolic Meanings of Colors in The Great Gatsby”. Studies in Literature and Language, 10(6), 38-44.

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
Available at:

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]
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