Gold and Yellow- Wealth or Decay?

           The colours yellow and gold are often used to describe wealth and beauty. Take for example the golden  golden youth and golden opportunities. Jordan Baker who is the golden girl of golf can be associated with this colour, “with Jordan’s slender golden arm resting in mine” (p. 44). This colour is used in the book with to describe wealth but is also used as the colour of death. Fitzgerald uses yellow to decouple the ideas of wealth and greatness and instead couples this wealth with corruption, amorality and death. The use of yellow to represent wealth can be associated with the old gold that used to be the form of money, instead of the green money found in America today. This can be related to the green light Gatsby reaches out to so many a night. It can be speculated that Gatsby was not only reaching out to Daisy but out to his hopes of obtaining enough money to make Daisy happy. However, in reaching out to this green light he is reaching out to the wrong colour, which is his new money. Daisy comes from old money and gold is the light, or money she requires. This old money need can then be related back to yellow as a symbol of wealth but also one of despair in this novel.

  This colour is used many times throughout the book and often symbolizes death and foreshadows bad things to come. For one thing, Gatsby’s car is yellow and it was the death machine that ended up killing Myrtle Wilson. Myrtle Wilson’s house is also yellow the place where this horrible event took place. Nick even described the lights in the garage after Myrtle’s death to be yellow, “... the garage, which was lit only by a yellow light in a swinging metal basket overhead” (p.132). The billboard eyes of Dr. T.J Eckleburg, another major symbol in this novel can also be related back to this colour. The eyes of Dr. T.J Eckleburg that stare over vast amounts of death and decay in the novel are ringed in a pair of enormous yellow glasses, “They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles...” (p.26). In chapter five of the book when Daisy and Gatsby first meet after many years, Gatsby is wearing a gold tie, the buttons on Daisy’s dress are gold and Nick describes the flowers as smelling like a pale gold, “pale gold odour of the kiss-me-at-the-gate” (p.88). Throughout this reunion Fitzgerald constantly refers back to the colour yellow which in a way can foreshadow the disparity and hopelessness of Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship.