-
On this bridge, any number of different types of cars could have driven by, but a hearse and a black limousine were chosen to help maintain Fitzgerald’s use of cars as a symbol. It’s as if death were driving by and laughing with his knowledge of the dark future for Gatsby’s car, and for Gatsby.
- The only other color of cars described in the valley of ashes is gray (Fitzgerald 27).
- This is a very ominous place and with the hearse and black limousine written in, the reader gets the feeling that this will be the setting for a very dreadful incident.
- Another indicator of the doom to befall the characters in the book is the lost wheel, which comes up a couple of times.
- The first time this happens is after one of Gatsby’s parties.
- A drunken partygoer runs off of the road and breaks off his wheel. This partygoer is so out of it, that he doesn’t even realize what has happened
- The same can be said for the main characters. They don’t really realize how corrupt they are and how they act towards other people.
- The driver states, “I know very little about driving-next to nothing. It happened and that’s all I know” (Fitzgerald 59).
- To which the reply was, “Well if you’re a poor driver you oughtn’t to try driving at night” (Fitzgerald 59).
- This helps the reader learn that the characters are not very good in their dealing with social problems and that trying to deal with these problems will result in traged
- The cars are also a symbol of the person who is in the drivers seat. Each of the main characters cars that are described in detail give an accurate description of that person’s personality.
A. Gatsby’s car was described as being, … a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns. (Fitzgerald 68)
- The cream color of his car signifies a kind of newness, like the “new money” that Gatsby is, but is somehow tainted and cannot be pure.
- We know that the way in which Gatsby accumulates his wealth is not known by the other characters, and they think that he became rich by bootlegging.
B. Daisy’s roadster that she owns in the Midwest, however, is white, showing her innocence at that point in her life. The fact that the car is a roadster shows the reader that she has the potential to become corrupt, which did happen.
1. While Daisy is driving Gatsby’s car, the car turns yellow.
2. ”Yellow symbolizes money and corruption in the novel” (Symbolism in The Great Gatsby). “Instead of being a ‘rich cream color,’ a witness is quoted saying ‘It was a yellow car,’ implying that the dream is dead” (Swygert).
V. cars play a very important part in helping portray the darkness in The Great Gatsby. The cars symbolize the death and despair of the story and help to characterize some of the main characters.
