Symbolism in the great gatsby文理学院英本0801班张海燕2008303010102I．IntroductionFrancis scott key Fitzgerald was American writer if novels and short stories,Fitzgerald is just the tragic hero of the period,whose works are evocatiive of the Jazz Ages,a term he coined himself.He is widely regard as one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers,Fitsgerald is considered a memberof the”Lost generation”of the tweties.He finished four novels,including The Great Gatsby and wrote dozens of short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age. The Great gatsby is considered Fitzgerald’s masterpiece.However, in 1925 no one predicted the eminence of the novel in the new century---not even Fitzgerald himself.At the age of 44,he died of frustration,After his death,some of his interesting writings were put together into a book entitled The Crack-up..The great Gatsby is a good illustration. Gatsby is a young gay from the Midwest.he falls in love with Daisy,a wealthy girl,but is too poor to marry her.the girl is then married to a rich young man, Tom buchanan,Determined to win back his lost love,Gatsby engages himself in boot legging and ather”shady”activities,thus earning enough money to buy a magnificent house,Then he spreads dazzling parties every weekend,hoping one day the buchanans will come.the buchanans finally come and Gatsby meets Daisy again,But the woman in front of him is not quiet the ideal love of his dream and they can never repeat the past.Then Daisy kills a woman (T om’ mistress)in an accident and plots with Tom to shift the blame on Gatsby. Finally ,Gatsby was shot and the buchanans escape,The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literatures of Fitzgerald’s period, which wins many favorable praises.one of the major reasons for The Great Gatsby’ high literary reputation is the using of symbolism.In the novel,symbolism runs through the whole story.The settings,the characters,the plots and the colors are all symbols and full of symbolic meanin.Fitzgerald is so creative and imaginative that he is skillful enough to use these symbols to reveal the theme of this novel.so it is very usful to view The Great Gatsby through the perspective of symbolism.II , the introduction of symbolA ,The Definition of symbol“in literature a symbol is a thing that refers or suggeste more than its literal meaning “,It is an object,animate or inanimate,which goes beyond the objective referent by evoking or suggesting to the reader a meaning on another level,a meanig byyond itself,Earnest carcior holds the view that language,art,myth,and religion are parts of the spritual symbolthey are the varied threads that weave the symbolist net,the tangled web of human experience.Literary symbols,combining imagges with suggestions,are classified into two broad types,one type refers to those embodying universal suggestions of meaning,For example,white color usually suggests purity,innocent and honesty.This tpye of symbols is widely used in western literature.It has been fomed as a tradition in the literrature.the other type of symbols secures its suggestiveness from the way in which it is used in a given work,in a special context,Thus ,in the novel The Great Gatsby the valley of ashes atands for the plight of the poor,Generally speaking,symbols in fictions are inanimate objects.But sometimes actions and gestures with large significance than its literal meaning are also symbolic,Raising arms may sense,the abundance of symbols exisit in many novels.B The Fuction of symbolismThroughout history the authors of literary works have used symbolism to develop a story or create an understanding,Many of the classics are filled with symbolism,and it is the symbolism that causes the story to stick in the reader’s mind and heart and make the story a classic,As barnet points out,”when we read,we may feel that certain characters and certain things in the story stand for more than themselvesmor the auhor has mentioned certain iterms or ideas in order to get us to think more deeply about something,This is because sometimes it is hard for writers to communicates the feelings evoked upon certain iterms concretely,exactly,and meaningfully,It would be very difficult to do, and in doing so the writer might lose the reader’s interest or worse,alienate them from the moment for the feeling is not the one they shared,but by allowing a symbol,the writer forces the reader to apply his or her own knowledge to the sitution,and the feelings evoked are the sole domain of the reader,not the author,As long as the feelings are well defended with evidence from the text,they are fine interpretations of the novels. Symbolism is used as one of the important devices in modern fiction and it is essentially an indirect mode of expression,which suggests much more than what is symbolism in literary works will be immensely helpful in determining the significance of the symbols used.symbolism as a literary movement with all its significance,meaning and association has astrong and deep influence on literature.III The Analysis of the symbolicA,symbolic colorsSymbolism is what makes a story complete.in the great gatsby ,F.scott Fitzgerald cleverly uses symbolism.Anything in a novel can be taken as a symbol,There are several colors used for symbolism in this novel,For example,the colors white,blue and green used through the book.Colors can accentuate the meaning of a story and explain certain actions of a character,In The Great Gatsby,F.scott Fitzgerald applies many important colors that allude to the personality of his characters.The colors given are repeatedmultiple times so that they can be established.1. whiteone color that is used frequently is white.The first time Nick meets his cousin Daisy at Tom and Daisy’s home,she was dressed totally white.so as the house and its furnishings are also turned in light shaeds .This fact might be interpreted as beuty,cleanliness,wealth,innocence .Daisy wears white dresses and recalls her “white girlhood”and this use of color helps her to characterize her laziness and uselessness . she is completely devoid of any knowledge of the outside world,something I found quite apparent was her obviusely shallow,money grubbing motives.For example,when she is taken into Gatsby’s home for a tour,she is shown Gatsby’ beautiful imported shirts,Daisy begins to cry,saying that these shirts are so beautiful.But what she is really expressing is her envy and jealousy of Gatsby’ new riches and all of his elaborate material possession.2 blueAnother symbolic color is blue,Blue stands out as symbol of melancholy and calmness.All of this manifests the author’s critical attitude to the contemporary tendency—ostentation, pursuit for material enjoyment and money worship.First, In the valley of ashes,there is an advertisement board of great size on which paints the blue and gigantic eyes of Doctor T.J.Ecklburg.In many days under sun and rain ,this pair of eyes is dimmed and seems to be tearing,looking at the valley of ashes and also the people there.The symbolized meaning of the blue eyes was not revealed untill the eighth chapter,when George wilson talked to Michael is about his wife’s disloyalty to him,he said “she might fool me but she couldn’t fool God.”Fitzgerald reused the blue color on George Wilson who is a little character in this great work.when wilson first comes to appear in this novel,he is described as follows”He was a blond,spiritlessman,and faintly handsome,when he saw us a gleam rang into his light blue eyes.”3 greenThe author uses green symbolizing hope.The image of green lamp appeared three times respectively at the crucial points of development,and played an important role in the process of modeling at the end of chapter one,where Nick went back home in the evening and saw that Gatsby stared at the green light means something special to Gatsby,for it has something to do with Daisy.Gatsby has chershed a dream,which is to marry Daisy who is an emblem of beauty and fortune to ter on ,Daisy married to Tom,but Gatsby still firmly believed that he could seize her back as long as he could own enough money.Thus ,that green light became the dream and hope in Gatsby’s heart.B symbolic theme1 American DreamThe American dream ,arising in the colonial period and developing in the nineteenth century,originally relates to a desire for spiritual and material improvement.For ordinaryAmericans ,the American dream is the success story;the American dream in the climbing of the ladder from rags to riches;the /American dream is to go west,and become a millionaire,We can recognize that Fitsgerald’s understanding transcends the popular trivializing of the American Dream.As a matter of fact,no novelist of his time had betterunderstood the nature of his joy-riding.extravagant and irresponsible society,and the spiritual desperation and sterility that it represented.2. The disillusionment of the American dreamfrom the 18th century to the 1920s,the American dream had been a dominant ideology enormously propagated,attributing one’s mateial success to self-improvement and hard working.and it became an unshakable ideal for generations,a power which brought about the prosperity of the American capitalism.However ,this dream ,as some critics and many writers pointed out,was an illusion that humans could never have fulfilled. Fitzgerald stresses here the need for hope and dreams to give meaning and purpose to man’s efforts.For Gatsby ,striving after some ideal is the way by which man can feel a sense of invovlement.a sence of his own identity.Gatsby is defeated by the buchanan in the end,his whole careers,his confidence in himself and in life are totally shattered when he fails to win Daisy back.with his dream vanished,he is spiritually dead.The collapse of Gatsby’s dream,however,is symbolic,his faliure of the American dream itself.。