SYMBOLS AND MOTIFS

Question 1

MYRTLE’S FIRE

Answer 1

• “the nerves of her body were continually smouldering.” - CH2
  “its driver hurried back to where - Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick, dark blood with the dust.” - CH7
• Comparing her with fire connects her with hell, perhaps suggesting she is hellish or impure in her affairs, a contrast to Daisy.

Question 2

USE OF WATER AS A SYMBOL OF THE DIVISION BETWEEN MEN AND THE DREAM

Answer 2

• CH5- when the rain is falling, Gatsby and Daisy are separated, symbolic of the barrier between them. But when they truly reconcile, the water stops, showing how Gatsby is coming close to his dream (which Daisy is symbolic of).
• “The day agreed upon was pouring rain.” - CH5
• “‘It’s stopped raining.’” - CH5
• The bay separated West and East Egg, once again symbolic of the barrier faced by those who aspire to more.
• Gatsby is killed in water. He dies in this barrier, similarly to how Myrtle died in the dust of the Valley of Ashes.
• Daisy is given a cold bath when she is being comforted when she gets the letter from Gatsby but still must marry Tom - “we locked the door and got her into a cold bath” - JORDAN CH4

Question 3

GATSBY IS ICARUS

Answer 3

• Gatsby, like Icarus, is too ambitious.
• The heat imagery in CH8, the chapter before his death, is symbolic of the sun.
• Then, he falls and drowns in the water, just as Icarus did.
• Gatsby’s car - “terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns.” - CH4. Gatsby’s car is described as a sun. Gatsby’s car is a symbol of the American dream. The American dream is the sun and Gatsby is Icarus.
• Gatsby drowns in the pool, just as Icarus drowned when he fell from the sky after flying too close to the sun. “With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool” - CH8

Question 4

SYMBOLISM OF AUTOMOBILES

Answer 4

• Harbingers of death - also, links to the American dream being a killer, as it was Gatsby’s yellow car, a symbol of the American dream, that killed Myrtle.
• Rolls Royce vs Ford. The Rolls Royce, Gatsby’s car, is European, going back to this idea of Gatsby’s dream of being exotic and cultured. The Ford, Tom’s car, is American, perhaps linking to this idea of Tom being comfortable in his status as an American, while Gatsby feels the need to compensate for his poverty and such by branching out and “reaching”.
• Tom drives a blue coupe (“It’s a blue car, coupe”- TOM CH7). This blue is symbolic of the blue blood of the aristocracy, a contrast to Gatsby’s yellow car (“brisk yellow bug” - CH3), which is symbolic of striving for wealth you could never achieve.
• “On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city, between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains” - CH3

Question 5

YELLOW VS GOLD

Answer 5

-Yellow is not quite gold - e.g. Gatsby’s car.

Question 6

THE EYES OF TJ ECKLEBERG

Answer 6

• “They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose.” - CH2.
• Links to advertising and conspicuous consumption. The person who put it up was going to start an oculist business, but then abandoned those plans. Symbolic of the abandoning of dreams.
• Could be seen as the eyes of God.
  “‘God sees everything,’ repeated Wilson.”

Question 7

MOTHS

Answer 7

• “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” - CH3
• “He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths so that he could ‘come over’ some afternoon to a stranger’s garden.” - CH3
• Moths are drawn to light (the wealth and status) and that is what kills them. Goes into this criticism from Fitzgerald of conspicuous consumption.

Question 8

FOUR HORSEMEN

Answer 8

• “In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress.” - CH9
• Links to the four horsemen perhaps?
• This idea that the apocalypse is coming if we continue like this.
• You could argue the process of the dream reflects the four horsemen. The conquest (so deciding to reach for the dream), the war (the actual fight for the dream), famine (when the dream inevitably never works) and death (the consequences of reaching too far).