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An essay-- about gastby? O.o |
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This is the final essay from my CP english class last year. It's a breifly edited rough draft (I had to hand write the final) so forgive some mistakes. Mostly, I'm just posting this for Jan.
Envious Growth
Imagine a tiny seed, spreading it's flowering vines up a white wall to reach the red roses, to bask in them with the sun. That is Gatsby, a country boy. A lost, passionate, and envious fellow. He rose swiftly from the bowels of the West and came East: for a life that was not his own, a life of riches and love no country boy could hope to obtain. And a love that no boy could hope to cling to. Jay Gatsby was a wealthy, passionate and envious individual who would reach for whatever was just out of reach.
Colours can be associated with him, like any man. Green for envy and growth Red for passion, cream for tradition and gold for wealth. Because he colors are too deep to cover in a short time, we will only cover green and cream, his primary, secondary a third colors.
Green:
Green is a difficult colour to read. Because it is the colour the human eye sees the most shades of, and because different cultures take it differently, we must look at all it's aspects when tying it to anything.. Certain shades can represent growth, stability, warmer weather. It can be tied in to money, wealth, financial security. Negatively, it can be tied to envy, a want of things that are not yours. Detail and control, and even wealth can be used as the negative connotations of this colour.
Cream:
For space and reference's sake, gold, yellow and white will also be tied in with the colour cream. Cream can be tied with tradition, with stability, wealth, serenity. Negatively: It can also be sterile places, no emotions, masks. Gold can be tied with tradition, sincerity, and wealth as well, along with sensuality and riches. Yellow will be another negative, showing cowardice and fear.
Red:
Excitement, urgent passion, love, promise of good times and Stability. It's negative sides include rash decisions, rush, and blood/death. Pink may also be thrown in as a variant of red, suggesting a gentler passion and simplistic emotions.
On to Gatsby himself now. His primary colour- the one associated with him most-- is green. Dark green, light green, any shade. He grew, from some fisherman out west, to a rich party thrower in the east.
He is also wealth. He has money and can afford to spend these evenings in the lap of luxury with the well known and wannabes. Gatsby can do nearly whatever he pleases with the green. He cannot do everything, though.
Gatsby is also the embodiment of envy. In the very first chapter, we witness this longing for something the truly rich have. Whether it be respect, companionship, or even one person, is unclear at this time.
Gatsby is growth: ever changing. He wants to achieve a dream, get what it is he envies. In growth, he is detail oriented and precise, planning things out for years at a time. He is determined to rise to the top.
His secondary: cream, yellow and gold are blatant as well. He his seeped in tradition. Or... he wants to be. It is part of his envious character. To wear it, like he constantly does- shows his desire to be so by pretending to be so. It is a mask that hides his weaknesses.
His gold, is another representation of his wealth and want for tradition. And yellow, his cowardice and fear.
Finally, his third, is passion—red. Whether simplistic or complicated, he is passion. His third colour is just that. With hints of it throughout the book, even in his tragic demise, you cannot ignore this pulse moving colour.
Let's delve into his wealth. It is obvious Gatsby had money. After all, he lived in a mansion. A creamy white mansion, a pool, elaborate garden. He has it—his mask—and his mask is wealth.
Envy is what this mask hides. In the first chapter we can see that want, that need for something that is unattainable.
“But I didn't call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone- he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily, I glanced seaward- and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.” (Fitzgerald pg. 25-26)
Gatsby wanted wealth, he wanted to grow and to become something he is not, and to get a love that does not belong to him. He wants Daisy, she and her life is that which he strives for. That life of hers across the bay.
To hide his envy, he covered himself in elaborate suits of cream and silver. Even his car showed both wealth, and tradition. He could not really mask his envy, his need to grow.
“It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory we started to town.” (pg. 68 )
His car is the ideal, what any rich man would have. It appears sincere. It is classic, it is tradition, it is cream. But only on the outside. Through a 'labyrinth' of things and this sterile coating is the interior. Green. Envy and growth. They say car can show a lot about a person by its looks and what it has. Gatsby's vehicle is no exception to that saying.
Also, his envy is hidden in his dressing habits. His crisp, clean, truthful white suit. He must wealthy if he can afford to wear such stain able, easily ruined colors. It is not so stable a mask as he would like to think.
“An hour later the front door opened nervously and Gatsby in a white flannel suit, silver shirt and gold colored tie hurried in. He was pale and there were dark signs of sleeplessness beneath his eyes.” (pg 89)
He wears this outfit to impress Daisy, to show her that this little poor country boy has blossomed There is no disputing his wealth. Why he has it however is an easy target for confrontation. His habit of masking himself with cream ceases to have it's effect in Daisy and Nick's presence. Even Tom can see it—his falseness. They know he is tired, worried and unsure of himself, that beneath all this wealth and stability, he does not know what to do with himself besides strive more. They know he is reaching out desperately for something he'll never have in Daisy and her life.
Once, he even tries to rebuild that mask, just for Daisy: that envy worthy, lovely thing.
“He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher-- shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry.” (pg. 97-98 )
He is willing to make a rash decision, throw all his careful planning away to become whatever his object of desire wishes. He wishes to please her so much that he will bear any colour and become anything for Daisy. Gatsby will bloom into whatever she pleases, as proved by this display-- this menagerie of colour.
This this rash decision to change and growth for his Rose of affection leads into the next colour: red. Gatsby's life is dotted with passion, rash decisions and the search for thrill.
“'After that, I lived like a young rajah in all the capitals of Europe—Paris, Venice, Rome—collecting jewels, chiefly rubies, hunting big game, painting a little, things for myself only, and trying to forget something very sad that had happened to me long ago.'” (pg 70)
In this paragraph alone we bear witness to that passion, that willingness to do whatever it takes to succeed. Gatsby hunted rubies. He hunted red: the excitement, the passion-- the pulse bringer. His entire life was freckled with red.
Yellow—a deviant of cream—finally reared it's ugly head in the company of his passion, Daisy. Driving, they hit and killed a woman, Myrtle, only to flee the scene of the crime.
“The “death car,” as the newspapers called it, didn't stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, then disappeared around the next bend. Michaelis wasn't even sure of it's colour-- he told the first policeman that it was light green.” (pg. 144)
“ I'm a friend of his.” Tom turned his head but kept his hands firm on Wilson's body. “He says he knows the car that did it... It was a yellow car.”” (pg. 148 )
“The God Damn coward!” he whimpered. “He didn't even stop his car.” (pg. 149)
This car, Gatsby's beautiful cream car was his downfall. From his growth, witnessed by a nobody, he became coward in the eyes that knew him. He wasn't even driving, but in keeping Daisy from stopping, in letting her take control, he became a coward. It was his accident that lost it all for him.
In Jay Gatsby's final moments, he was calm. Still in love, still unsure of himself. His mask of serenity and wealth is dropped, and stained with his passion. The little flowering vine had begun to wilt. After a fond, almost appalling recollection of his past, we witness this:
“First he nodded politely, and then, his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we'd been is ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time. His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of color against the white steps and I thought of the night when I first came to his ancestral home three months before.” (pg 162)
He returned to that wandering, gentle, envious thing in that last moment. A stain of lost passion against his mask of traditional wealth. His act has been discovered and the thing he loved and envied is forever lost to him. He must change and grow again. He must replant himself.
It is in these last, lost, and unsure hours that Gatsby's new seed is broke open and turned sterile. In a last minute painting of his primary, secondary and third, all is scattered in a ripple of water, a small gust of wind—his life that touched so few—Gatsby dies.
“With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of a compass, a thin red circle in the water.” (pg 170)
In the cool, outer tiles of his white pool, in his mask, Gatsby, with all his passion for life is uprooted before he can reach his sunshine. Envy and growth lead his passionate and brief life to its end.
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning----” (pg 188 )
Driven by envy, hidden in a mask and reaching for passion, Gatsby wanted to and though only a little—like some shoot reaching for the sun before a frightful uprooting—did grow.
 NightWandererPuck · Mon Oct 02, 2006 @ 05:42am · 0 Comments |
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