Green in Gatsby - PowerPoint Presentation

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Green in Gatsby

Anna Barbee

Kaila Evans

Abigail FosterSlide2

After the house, we were to see the grounds and the swimming-pool, and the hydroplane and the mid-summer flowers — but outside Gatsby’s window it began to rain again, so we stood in a row looking at the corrugated surface of the Sound. “If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,” said Gatsby. “You always have a green

light that burns all night at the end of your dock.” Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green

light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

I began to walk about the room, examining various indefinite objects in the half darkness. A large photograph of an elderly man in yachting costume attracted me, hung on the wall over his desk. “Who’s this?” “That? That’s Mr. Dan Cody, old sport.” The name sounded faintly familiar. “He’s dead now. He used to be my best friend years ago.” There was a small picture of Gatsby, also in yachting costume, on the bureau — Gatsby with his head thrown back defiantly — taken apparently when he was about eighteen. “I adore it,” exclaimed Daisy. “The pompadour! You never told me you had a pompadour — or a yacht.” (Fitzgerald Chp 5)

Object: Green Light at Daisy’s DockCharacter: Gatsby & DaisySymbolic Meaning: Gatsby need for Daisy, how much he really wants her.Slide3

James Gatz — that was really, or at least legally, his name. He had changed it at the age of seventeen and at the specific moment that witnessed the beginning of his career — when he saw Dan Cody’s yacht drop anchor over the most insidious flat on Lake Superior. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out to the

Tuolomee, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him and break him up in half an hour. I suppose he’d had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people — his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God — a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that — and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end

. (Fitzgerald

Chp 6)Object: A torn jerseyCharacter: To a young James GatzSymbolic Meaning : Hope & fresh startSlide4

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby

believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning —— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. (Fitzgerald Chp 9)

OBJECTS: Green light, Daisy’s dockCHARACTERS: GatsbyMEANING: The Green Light at the end of Daisy’s dock represents Gatsby’s hope of having Daisy and the life that comes with having her.Slide5

What does Green represent?Throughout the novel, the color green symbolizes hope.

This is proven by the three quotes that link the color green to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock and the green jersey. What all of these three elements have in common is that they are all items that represent hope for the future. Furthermore, the one object that can help,

The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock,

actually represents a desire for a future with Daisy. Therefore, the objects will always be a reminder for Gatsby’s predicted future.Slide6

What character represents the color Green?The character that is most symbolically linked to the color green is Jay Gatsby. Readers know that he is the main subject of the novel.

He was a man with a crush on his past love. He hopes to be with Daisy for a long time and have this dream future with her. Therefore, it is clear that his fate is to gain hope. This is proven throughout the novel.