The Great Gatsby Light Analysis

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Light imagery is used prominently throughout the novel The Great Gatsby, especially in chapters 5 and 8. The romance between Gatsby and Daisy is a major theme throughout the novel and light is used frequently to display this. When Gatsby’s house “lit up like the world fair” and the light “felt unreal on the shrubbery”, it represents his wealth and how he wants to impress Daisy. Gatsby is also described as an “ecstatic patron of recurrent light” when he is talking to Daisy about the “twinkle bells of sunshine in the room”. Daisy is described as “gleaming like silver” which represents her wealth and she is a part of the “secret society to which she and Tom belonged” which shows how she is ‘above’ everyone. She and Jordan are also always wearing…show more content…
Myrtle wishes she was in the place of Daisy and wishes to escape to the ‘Egg’. She breaks down and cries when she finds out George borrowed the suit he wore to the wedding, which shows her wish to be married to a rich man. This is one of the reasons she has an affair with Tom Buchanan, the other being that she just wanted to have fun “ You can’t live for ever” is the way she puts it. Myrtle doesn’t treat George with any respect, when Tom is with them she is “walking through her husband as if he were a ghost”. She also states that she “made a mistake when she married him”. She buys things to ‘escape’ such as the dog she buys when she is with Tom and Nick. They live in the same place they work, which is described as a “shadow of a garage” and later as “unprosperous and bare”. They live in what Nick describes as the “valley of ashes” and George is what he describes as an “ash grey men”. This shows that the poor are not living out the great American dream and how they live to work and work to live. George is treated fairly poorly at work, as Tom demonstrates when he roughly yelled “Let’s have some gas” at him. He is constantly working and refused to go to bed at one point because he would lose a lot of
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