The Valley Of Ashes-The Great Gatsby

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The Valley of Ashes-The Great Gatsby Places tend to tell a story about the community that surrounds it. This story is usually very truthful, and very rarely does it fail to fully show the essence and morals of its people. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the Valley of Ashes is portrayed as a desolate, neglected, and sick place. Fitzgerald portrays the Valley of Ashes as a very desolate place. He gives us a picture of a “desolate are of land” that is so grim even “the motor road [hurriedly] joins the rail road, so as to shrink away” from it. The Valley of Ashes is the dumpsite for the lower class. The Ashes represent their once vivid hopes and dreams which have dies away, leaving their mind, represented by the Valley, in a state of desolation. It is also very ironic for Fitzgerald to depict the Valley as “a farm where ashes grow like wheat into…grotesque gardens” because you usually associate gardens and wheat with fertility and not with gray, sterile landscapes where it is impossible for something to be grown. Again, this proves that the Valley is desolate because there is no happiness sprouting from it. Fitzgerald also illustrates the Valley of Ashes as a neglected place. The billboard of “the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg” and their gigantic irises represent the eyes of God, although not concretely expressed. The eyes on the billboard are described as “dimmed by…paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground”. The denotation of the word solemn is gloomy or somber, however the connotation of this word in our case is that of marked by the invocation of a religious sanction. We can infer, based on his diction, that Fitzgerald’s intent was for the billboard to represent something God-like. When the above mentioned is fused with the description of Nick “[walking]…under [the eyes’] persistent stare” we can conclude
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