The Great Gatsby

“Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight” (pg 27).

Fitzgerald emphasizes the color grey while describing the Valley of Ashes in The Great Gatsby. As the color grey suggest today, it also symbolizes lifelessness, hopelessness, lack of happiness, and even death in the novel as well. Everything that involves the Valley of Ashes – whether it’s the village itself, the cars, or the people – lacks the vitality (that are represented through bright colors such as green and yellow) of the regions that surround it. It is almost like a dump – an ever-growing depository of the burned waste of people who live in New York. In other words, the Valley of Ashes is the result of the “eggs” and New York City as the people there transport their waste to the Valley while doing everything that they please. Figuratively, this shows the ethical decay and the social decay of America. There is a “death” in moral standards. Therefore, Fitzgerald uses this symbol to inform the readers how the American Dream is corrupted because as people desperately go after wealth and other materials, they are getting corrupted as well as corrupting the society, causing them to live in a wasteland of morals. It also illustrates the failure of the American Dream. During the Roaring Twenties, people – especially poor people – were supposedly given opportunities and chances to climb up the social ladder. However, in the Valley of Ashes, which is the area for the poor, shows how there is no hope at all. The people there are lifeless and hopeless and it shows how the American Dream is not all what it seems to claim. The poor people can never reach the same level as the rich people.