For F. Scott Fitzgerald, colors provide a subtle outlet for expression of commentary on the American dream. Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby was first published in 1925, amidst the anxiety of post World War I reconstruction. Fitzgerald’s novel explores whether upward social mobility is attainable for the Lost Generation, one who has already found all faiths dispelled, all dreams defeated, and all gods choked in the midst of sleep. Through the use of tint, Fitzgerald appeals to an unspoken archetype of the cultural mind, one whose beliefs are carried by a group of people connected through a similar identity. Fitzgerald’s tincture symbolism enables him to transcend words whose connotations are widespread even amongst English speaking Americans and appeal directly to the American people through the language of color; one that is much less ambiguous, but equally captivating for the backdrop of culture it developed out of. The colors Fitzgerald chooses to wed together and the images he imbues them in symbolize character qualities of a dichotomy that spawns in humanity’s purity and dies in the face of its pitfalls.
The primary colors Fitzgerald employs as symbols of human characteristics are the color white bound to its opposite, red. In the text, white is constantly used as a direct reference to dream. Before the narrative even commences, the color white is used to define the residents of East Egg, “Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans” (Fitzgerald 5). The immediate association of three words in this quote is provided, “white”, “palaces”, and most fundamentally, “the Tom Buchanans”, the reader is being led to believe that “The Buchanans” live in a chivalristic “palace” where the fairytale state of dreams can be attested to by the personal status of the Buchanans. Surrounded by adjectives of levity and flourish, white appears to carry the connotations of the ethereal. “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. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering” (8). The image in the reader’s mind of two dreamlike women is created by the contrast of the “stationary couch” against Jordan and Daisy who appear “buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon”. At Nick’s first glance, the women take on the glorious quality of pure dream. However, Tom Buchanan quickly unveils a more honest reality by shattering the false airs put on by Jordan and Daisy, “Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor” (8). The quality of dream isn’t intrinsically imbued in Daisy and Jordan; it “dies” with the wind as Nick watches his initially erroneous presumptions of the women “balloon to the floor”. With the continuation of the narrative, there are constant references to unsteady realizations by Nick about Tom and Daisy that imply façade personalities. Nick notes one such immediate cognizance after Daisy’s enticing voice pauses and releases him from her “seductive” falsities, “The instant her voice broke off ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me” (17). In the most basic terms, Tom, Daisy, and Jordan are “insincere”. However, they are only insincere as long as one continues to understand their natures based on the falsities that accompany their artificial “white” exhibitions, which Fitzgerald takes good care to separate from the truth, provided by red.
The color red, white’s spectral partner in the text, initially appears to serve the same allegorical gossamer purpose as white, but as the narrative progresses it becomes clear that while red is at first applicable to all of those characters who embody the dream achieved, it takes on a very different substance after the climax, as it will be noted. Fitzgerald first presents the coupling of red and white in the exposition of Tom, Daisy, and their house. Yet, just as Nick initially understands Daisy and Jordan to carry qualities of innocent, pure dreamers until Tom ceases the masking action of the wind, so does red initially appear in the text as an indication of achieved status by birthright. Fitzgerald writes, “Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay” (6). The heavenly dream and those who carry privileged status are paralleled to the high stature of Tom and Daisy’s towering “red-and-white… mansion” that is so altitudinous, it resembles a focal point of tall elevation that “overlooks the bay”. The residents of such a house have obviously flourished their lives with the privilege of wealth, and as such feel irresistibly compelled to look down upon the bay. The opulent airs provided by the East Egg are at first nothing more than pulchritudinous references to a Victorian lifestyle obtained by those entitled by birth to “old money”; however, While it is true that red represents the inherited wealth of the East, it is often applied to inanimate objects that carry subtle relations to its true nature. On the drive home from East Egg, Nick encounters several red objects that relate to the climax of the novel, “Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red gas pumps sat out in pools of light” (20). The turning point of the novel occurs when Daisy, in a fit of emotion, cannot control herself while operating Gatsby’s car and hits Myrtle Wilson, Tom’s mistress. The color red, is representative of bloodshed, but a bloodshed without responsibility as implications of achieved status are present. In this way, red symbolically represents an accepted negligence among those who have been handed wealth. This is in some ways expected from the practical standpoint of the concept of earning. Tom, Daisy, and Jordan allegorically stand for the dream, but also for the gross pain that can be caused by attaining the dream without effort. Without effort, the dream’s achievement is greatly devalued and plagues itself with irresponsibility. Later on, associations between Myrtle and the violent fate she is destined to meet are drawn. Myrtle’s sister is described, “The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty, with a solid, sticky bob of red hair, and a complexion powdered milky white” (30). Catherine’s complexion is described as “powdered milky white”, her hair as “sticky” and “red”. The reader is at this point unconscious of Myrtle’s demise, and so Fitzgerald creates another false impression in the text. Myrtle’s sister would at first be interpreted by the literary audience as a randomly generated character who again represents achieved personal wealth, but her hair is undoubtedly a foreshadowing of the gruesome death of her sister; one where the best associative words in the text are those that correspond to the “sticky”, “red” qualities of blood. The plot arc’s climax ends with Nick’s observation after Gatsby’s death, “A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of transit, a thin red circle in the water” (162). Gatsby has just been shot dead in his own pool by the crazed George Wilson after Wilson erroneously assumes Gatsby had killed his wife. Fitzgerald chooses words such as “course”, “revolved”, and “circle” to convey connotations that the narrative cycle has ended. This quote in and of itself represents the entirety of the falling action in The Great Gatsby due to the fact that Fitzgerald informs the reader here that besides the exposition, there will no longer be development of a meta-narrative. The quote also serves to mark the end of violence enacted upon the protagonist. By implementing the descriptive adjective “red” before the indicator “circle”, Fitzgerald guarantees that violence has come to a conclusion, starting at birth and ending with death. To further make obvious that a result has been disclosed in the quote, this is the last time Fitzgerald imbues red in the text, and it is the last instance of bloodshed in the novel.
An ambiguity begins to arise between whether Tom and Daisy ought to be recognized for their dreamlike appearance, proven a façade, or their violent neglect of the value of human life. In simpler terms, it becomes unclear whether Daisy and Tom are quintessentially “white” or “red”. Fitzgerald ultimately provides no concise choice in the colors themselves. The author does however answer the question by providing reactions to an equally obscure noun functioning adjective. The object of choice is the rose. In the first chapter, the adjective “rosy” is exhausted by Fitzgerald in more than fifteen instances, most often referring either to Tom and Daisy’s scope of wealth, or the Buchanans themselves.. Fitzgerald first writes of the rose, “Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses” (7). The general dilemma of the rose image comes from the fact that a rose may naturally either grow white or red, so whilst the rose itself continues to baffle the reader’s evidence for judgments of Tom and Daisy, how the rose interacts with the world around it leads to the clear understanding of the natures of the Buchanans. Looking back to the quote, the roses receive only one word of description, “pungent”. The pungency of an olfactory stimulator is defined as acutely distressing to the feelings or mind. Tom Buchanan embodies the same pungency, his hand passing over the wealthy accumulations “in its sweep” implying the same overwhelming aspects of the rose’s scent in terms of sheer wealth and physical power. Nick’s reaction to the general idea of the rose also aids the gleaning of insight into whether Tom and Daisy are substantially red or white. Daisy utters, “I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?” (14) Daisy looks for an extempore comparison to Nick and finds connection through the narcissistic identifying of herself. This piece of text might not serve the function of isolating red or white in the true disposition of the Buchanans, and it almost certainly doesn’t by itself, but Nick’s response to the inference that he and Daisy are the same is extremely telling. “This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose” (14). Nick’s definitive and impetuous refusal to distinguish himself in the same way that Daisy has been characterized, colors the answer to Daisy and Tom’s proclivity in ruddy shades. The most poignant illustration of Fitzgerald marking Tom and Daisy as more red than white, occurs after Gatsby has taken the blame for killing Myrtle. Up until this point, Fitzgerald has been adamant in defining personal philosophy as it relates to each character’s perspective of the world. For Tom and Daisy, the world is a playground and there are no consequences, for Nick the world is a terrible place filled with corrupt people achieving wealth, but for Gatsby, the hopeless idealist, the world is a world of opportunities and hope, “He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly… It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey” (48). Gatsby’s smile is an expression of perpetual belief in improvement, but after making the fatal mistake of hoping, loving, and trusting too much, his entire perspective of the world changes. “I have an idea that Gatsby no longer believed it would come… He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is” (161). Tom and Daisy, the roses, have shattered Gatsby’s understanding of the world, leaving lost belief to be replaced by realizations of the “grotesque”. This paragon conveys that at their most basic level, Tom and Daisy are tinted red. Their means of attaining wealth without effort or strife has left them with an absence for the understanding of value and thus with an absence of responsibility. Without responsibility, Tom and Daisy are never able to exhibit or even fathom remorse after committing crimes against humanity, illustrated by their lack of care for Gatsby and his fate. Finally, without the very fundamental emotion of remorse, Tom and Daisy are left in a static lifestyle of unintentional, but unenlightened evil and Gatsby has finally become attentive to the fact that change within these characters can never occur. This path that Daisy and Tom take toward rampant brutality is extremely substantial in understanding that Fitzgerald’s rose, while not specifically colored in the text, can be interpreted as intrinsically red. The first reason for this is that while appearing to have achieved the dream, the Buchanans have really only been privileged with wealth and have never felt pain, consequently they are without the ability to feel empathy. They cannot uphold white as a predisposition; it is only a factitious representation. The second is that the catalyst for the major narrative events of this novel is Tom and Daisy’s self-unacknowledged vehemence, pigmenting them red. Simply put, Tom and Daisy do not fit the qualifications of an intrinsic “white” ethereality, their actions only categorize them under the carnal destructiveness of red.
Finally, the character traits that Fitzgerald denotes through the employing of colors also contain significations in their mixing. The tincture of pink is produced through the mixing of red and white. In the metaphorical sense, this is where dream and violence have collided in Fitzgerald’s text. Directly before Gatsby loses faith in humanity’s ability to better itself, Fitzgerald utilizes pink to demonstrate an exchange of essence between Daisy and Gatsby. When Nick arrives in East Egg after the accident with Myrtle Wilson, he turns to walk towards the gate of Tom’s mansion, “I hadn’t gone twenty yards when I heard my name and Gatsby stepped from between two bushes into the path. I must have felt pretty weird by that time, because I could think of nothing except the luminosity of his pink suit under the moon” (142). Gatsby is hiding behind “two bushes”, he avoids being seen by Tom Buchanan and the household because of an increasing alienation, one that was spurred through his agreeing to take on Daisy’s sin as if it was his own. Through the allegorical iridescences, we have already proved that the white airs put on by Daisy, mask her true crimson nature. In the case of Gatsby however, white is the actual saturation of the heart. Gatsby does embody belief and the ethereal dream, but that is beginning to change here. Gatsby and Daisy start on different ends of the same spectrum, Gatsby at white, and Daisy at red. Here, the two characters move in opposing sequences towards through the center of the spectrum, where they meet, and continue outwards where the other character’s disposition was originally located. Gatsby has departed at white and is approaching the red end of the gamut by assuming Daisy’s brutality. Conversely, Daisy is able to traverse to the white end of the scope by redressing herself with her white semblances through Gatsby’s fatal decision. At this specific moment in the narrative, both characters have met in the middle of the transfer, at pink. It is also important to note that where Daisy was previously referred to with a false appearance of white, so now Gatsby has taken up a similar fake nature, one of red. Gatsby’s embodiment comes in the form of his “pink suit” and delineates his growing isolation from the dream, “His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of color against the white steps” (154). Gatsby no longer has any chance of reaching his highest; he has become “a bright spot of color” stained pink by violence “against the white steps” of possibility and hope of achievement. In order for this metaphor to complete itself, examples of both Gatsby and Daisy relating to pink are needed. “I looked at the house; there were two or three bright windows downstairs and the pink glow from Daisy’s room on the second floor” (144). Therefore, an image is captured of both Gatsby’s and Daisy’s transitions from red to the false white occurring through Gatsby’s sacrifice. These examples adduce the truth that Fitzgerald mixes colors to define locations of character temperament on their respective maps.
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