
Many authors use different ways to give their readers a certain feeling or attitude toward
important subjects. Some of these techniques are more effective than others. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses
many of these different techniques in his novel The Great Gatsby. Sometimes, Fitzgerald pairs an
adjective and a noun together that do not usually fit that way to give readers a certain aura around a
subject. Other times, he applies meaning to a symbol, and then uses it for this same purpose.
Fitzgerald uses this last technique with many colors, including gold, green, white/gray and red/pink. In
his novel The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald builds up meaning for colors, namely white/gray and
red/pink then later uses that meaning to give readers a certain reminder of a feeling around an
important object.
The meaning Fitzgerald builds up and uses for white/gray is uniformity, with white being a bit
nicer and higher class and gray being more older and faded. Fitzgerald sets up this meaning in the
beginning of the novel with constant uses of both. Daisy and Jordan are constantly “in white” (8)—in
fact, everyone is always wearing white: Nick wears “white flannels” (41) to Gatsby’s party, Tom wears
a “white shirt” (36) when he meets Myrtle, and Catherine is “powdered milky white” (30). In fact, the
only time people are not wearing white is when Nick is getting his impressions of Gatsby’s party: “the
halls... are gaudy with primary colors” (40). Fitzgerald further defines these two colors in coloring
many common, unimportant subjects these colors: as Nick goes to work, he goes “down the white
chasms of lower New York” (56), the names of people at Gatsby’s parties are now “gray names” (61)
on Nick’s timetable, Catherine’s apartment is “one slice in a long white cake of apartment-houses”—
uniformity (28). He also describes plain or common people or places as white or gray: Jordan and
Daisy had a “white girlhood” (19) together, there are “gray cars” and “gray land” (23) in the valley of
ashes, the “Italian child” in the railroad is “gray” (26), and the dog-seller is “a gray old man” (27).
After Fitzgerald adds enough meaning to white/gray, he uses them to signify unimportance or
uniformity to certain subjects. This using colors to show readers something first starts with Daisy.
After a long time without any significant use of either of these colors, Fitzgerald comes out describing
Daisy as “dressed in white” in “a little white roadster”; readers begin to see Daisy as less of a character,
more like just a uniform addition, something that Gatsby wants and longs for (74). Fitzgerald uses
more of this technique around Daisy to give this impression of Daisy being a more uniform addition,
for example, there is a “gray haze of Daisy’s fur collar” (18), and she is again in a “white” (115) dress
before Tom and Gatsby’s encounter. 