Green Lights, Valley of Ashes, and Old Sport: How Fitzgerald Uses Symbolism and Diction to Depict 1920s America in 'The Great Gatsby'

The United States of America faced a rapid growth in the economy after industrialization occurred in 1860. This material prosperity and economic development had been unmatched from the end of World War I (1918) until the Great Depression (1929) which is known as the Jazz Age (Maier et al., 2006). The substantial economic development spurred many Americans to pursue the American Dreams as characterized by (Kamp, 2009) who claims it involves freedom, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. However, during this era, the Matthew Effect intensifies excessively which means that the distribution of incomes and wealth begins to polarize in the United States (McMahon, 2004). This phenomenon depresses the individuals who struggle mightily to achieve the success and attain the American Dream by diminishing the opportunities of lower-class people moving up in the world. According to Boyer (2012), the younger generation rejected traditional morals and values, embraced consumerism, and lived a lavish and dissipated life in this era. While, the despair and disillusionment was there and spread because the new values have not evolved that make them feel only they reflect individual feelings. The Great Gatsby, written by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013), is published in this era and often considered one of the Great American Novels. Its success cannot be merely due to the beautiful language, graceful style, or even the tragic story, but the accurate captures of the ethos and the enduring impact on Americans. Thus, this essay, focusing on the pursuit of American Dream and the portrayal of social class in the Jazz Age, will present the reasons of its successful presentation by analyzing the symbolism and diction of this novel, referring its cultural background.

Symbolism 

This novel is packed with objects that support the symbolic life of the book; hence this essay will focus on identifying a few of the key symbols, such as the allusive green light, the automobile, West Egg and East Egg, and the valley of ashes in The Great Gatsby. The author uses these to the conditions of society during those days, as well as a metaphor about certain human dreams and the class distinctions that fit the time.

The green light placed at the end of Daisy’s dock, which only appears three times, is a symbol of Gatsby’s hope, his dream and more largely American Dream (Dowling, 2006). When that minute green light first made known in the novel, Nick found that Gatsby was tremblingly stretching out his arms toward it in the dark night. In this place, the author use the image of the only light in the darkness for Gatsby’s dream in the life and furthermore the tremble of Gatsby denotes his ecstasy and lust for that dream, referring to the everymen’s aspiration for American Dream. In order to detect the association meaning of ‘green’ in the 1910s and 1920s the Corpus of Historical American English (2017) is used for the analyses the collocation of ‘green’. Although a full spectrum of collocations may be derived in future work, in this paper only the noun collocations were chosen since the function words, which are typically the most frequent words in text, can be excluded from the language research (Palmer, 2010).

Chart 1: the collocations of green listed by frequency in the 1910s

Chart 2: the collocations of green listed by frequency in the 1920s

According to these two charts, the term ‘green’ is considered to be connected with the objects with the characteristics of nature and life, for example, the ‘valley', ‘forest’, ‘grass’,and ‘meadows’. Therefore, the American Dream, symbolised by the green light, harboursthe features of vigour, vitality, and possibilities which perceived to be held by nature. Furthermore, the description of Nike’s recalling that “Gatsby believed in the green light, the organic future that year by year recedes before us then…” also employs the term ‘organic’ to reflect this theme. Referring to the Corpus of Historical American English (2017), the collocations of ‘organic’ are comparatively assembling with that of ‘green’ such as ‘life’, ‘nature’, ‘evolution’, and ‘soil’. It seems like that Fitzgerald displayed an immaculateand pure target which will never be contaminated; However, Gatsby pursues Daisy, or the American Dream, by earning fortune illegally, dishonestly and immorally which shows the corruption of it. In this respect, the original sincere dream has been distorted with consumerism, pragmatism, and utilitarianism as well. The car, additionally, is an important symbolism which reveals almost all major characters’ pursuit of higher social status and prosperity. Particularly for Gatsby, it is an identity of his achievements and thing to attract Daisy back. This seemingly direct measure of enhancing positions exaggerates this certain money worship. The author applies these comparisons to imply the vigorous pursuit of the American Dream and the contemporaries’ misunderstandings of this pure ideal.

Except those principal ones, there are multiple main symbolisms which indicate the social class as well. The first one is the valley of ashes located between West Egg and New York. The portrayal of its dinginess, chaos, and deformity represents the quality of paupers’ life magnified by the extravagance of West Egg and East Egg. This contrast manifests the American social condition in Jazz Age when the poor lead a life of tribulation but the wealthy enjoy the arrogant, dissolute, and sinful mode of life. Moreover, it may also satirise the young generation, who neglected the poverty and evil in the society, indulged themselves with the illimitable enjoyment of material consumption. Furthermore, the West Egg and East Egg, which have the identical appearance but also a dichotomy between them, symbolise the different social status as well. Individuals who lived in the East Egg are considered to possess higher social status as an aristocracy like Tom and Daisy. In contrast, Gatsby living in the West Egg is depicted as a bounder, who is vulgar and garish, pretending to be noble. This description shows the individuals’ enduring aspiration after American Dream but the continual abortive consequences due to the serious Matthew Effect. Additionally, the different traits harboured by those who reside in these two Eggs illustrate the social situations as well. In the novel, Daisy, presenting little compunction to it and even defaulting the funeral, evades the responsibility and imputes to Gatsby about murdering Myrtle which caused Gatsby’s death. Compared with the relatively virtuousGatsby, the persons in the East Egg are related to moral decay which becomes an analogy with the unethical, selfish and inconsiderate upper-class people. These presentations reveal the tortuous social situations which produce a certain social discrimination in the 1920s.

Diction

Although the symbolism is adequately utilised to depict the social conditions in that period, the diction of the novel is worth analysing because Fitzgerald uses typical language to emphasise the impression on the splendour of American dream and the cruel social class circumstances.

The portrayal of Daisy magnifies the beauty of her and therefore the wonderfulness of American Dream. In the lines about Gatsby recalling his first meet with Daisy, the commendatory terms are frequently used to display the desire held by Gatsby. In the “There was a ripe mystery about it…and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered”,the non-restrictive attributive clauses and conjunctions are employed to lead me to read it continuously which brings me a feeling of nice eternal features will emerge. As Daisy symbolizes the American Dream, it also triggers the readers’ longings for the beautiful ideal. However, the author utilises a kind of poetic diction to perform description to present the tragedy ending, for example, the line “She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing”. In this line, the rhythm changed because the feet altered from iambs to anapaests and ends with a cacophony. It made me decrease the speed gradually and stop with an unpleasant dissonant sound ‘nothing’ which guides me to generate a depressed mood. The depiction which employing two different tonesunintentionally brings the readers the feelings of American Dream worthwhile to be pursued and the regret of failure.

Furthermore, there are diverse expressions to allude the social class in that period, for example, the elaborations on Gatsby’s luxurious party. The ‘enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names’ indicates the egoism by the high-class people which are also the declarations of that in the real world. However, those who attend this party consider Gatsby as a German spy during the war which shows their despising a newly rich. Moreover, after analysing the frequency by the corpus software WordSmith 4, it is found that the term ‘sport, which often collocates with ‘old’ to formulate a slang which means ‘dude’, appears 47 times in the novel. It also alludes Gatsby’s social class through his frequent exploit of that informal colloquialism because analysing the language utilisation is conducive to examining people’s personalities, status and social positions (Wodak and Meyer, 2016). Additionally, in one dialogue, Tom says "All this 'old sport' business. Where'd you pick that up?" to show his derision of Gatsby’s superficiality. These descriptions illustrate the difficulties of the lower class entering higher orders of society as well as the aristocrats’ contempt for the poor. It also leads the readers to concentrate on considering the possibilities for Gatsby to achieve success in that distorted society.

In conclusion, this essay has analyses the symbolism and diction, which perform significant roles in capturing the ethos, of the Great Gatsby. This novel depicts both the vigorous pursuit of the American Dream and the situations of social class. In respect of the aspiration to the American Dream, Fitzgerald draws considerable analogies between it and the plot. For instance, the green light, which is regarded as an immaculate target, serves an essential symbolism to that expectancy. Furthermore, the diction of the novel reveals it as well such as the laudatory description of Daisy which brings readers the feelings of desires to the ideal. For the conditions of social class, the author utilises multiple symbolisms to reflect that theme such as the valley of ashes, West Egg and East Egg. The diction in the novel magnifies it by depicting the dichotomy of two types of life. They show a vivid life and social situations in the Jazz Age and these elaborations are the principal factors of the Great Gatsby being recognised as one of the Great American Novel. Additionally, the long-term influence on the Americans is the other reason as well. This novel can be regarded as a book which urges people to pursue the spectacular American Dream but reminds people to select an appropriate way to it because it depicts an imperfect but worth pursuing a dream and a tragedy of seeking for it by an improper measure. Therefore, the Great Gatsby, succeeding in describing a splendid history and an unforgettable period, will be famous in anticipatable future and inspire people’s mind during a long span.

References

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