What They Really Mean

What they really mean

Everything stands for one thing or another whether known or just your opinion based on information given. In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, signs and symbols maybe clear to the author but to the reader they can be something very different. The narrator, Nick Carraway, is Gatsby's neighbor in West Egg, upon arriving in New York; Nick visits his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom. The Buchanans live in the posh Long Island district of East Egg; Nick, like Gatsby, resides in nearby West Egg, a less fashionable area looked down upon by those who live in East Egg. The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg symbolize God and how he watches over everybody and anybody, The Valley of Ashes symbolizes the dull and lifeless style of the working class, it is in between New York City and Long Island and represents moral and social decay; and the Light at the end of the dock symbolizes hope for a relationship between Daisy and Gatsby.

The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg symbolize God and how he watches over everybody and anybody. As Nick looks out on the land something stands out, "... "The eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic-their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose (27)." While looking at the giant eyes after Myrtle's death Wilson reveals he had taken his wife to the window just before she died and told her, "God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me but you can't fool God! God sees everything (167)". This billboard advertisement -- which provides its eternal presence looming above the ash-heaps -- takes on added significance, as a grief stricken George Wilson refers to it as God. "Modern man not only loses God, but he loses the means of finding a substitute for God, by which Fitzgerald meant the means of incarnating his life with a sense of wonder (38)" Not everybody can feel God in their lives you have to appreciate and know that he is there for you.

The Valley of Ashes symbolizes the dull and lifeless style of the working class. It is in between New York City and Long Island and represents moral and social decay. Nick is describing what the Valley of the Ashes is, "...Where ashes take the forms of houses& chimneys, & rising smoke, & finally, with a transcendent effort.... (27)." All the old homes with the elderly and the