Oceans Apart

A study of blue in “The Great Gatsby”

Strong waves ripple off the docks as a steady stream of water pours from the sky. The fresh water mixes with the salt. Thunder can be heard in the distance like a whisper, warning of things to come. While not a single color is mentioned, this scene is filled with it; from the ocean to the docks and everywhere in between, there are hundreds of colors and shades. The novel The Great Gatsby uses many colors as symbols, but blue is the most intriguing and maybe even the most depressing. In the scene above, there was a distance between the docks and the thunder, a distance that will never end, just like in the book. While the distance in the scene is obvious, the distance in this story is not. There are many forms of distance. Physical distance to emotional, even the distance between classes are portrayed in this novel. The Great Gatsby uses blue through Eckleburg’s eyes, the vast ocean, and a wealth of clothing to convey distance that people in the novel shall never find a way to end.

While the great Doctor T. J. Eckleburg is not a person we meet, his role in this novel cannot go unnoted. “The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic,” overlooking a place filled with piles of ash. His eyes are hidden behind glasses, his blue eyes that mean nothing, nothing more than the paint they are. Nick, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, notes he can feel “Doctor Eckleburg’s persistent stare.” as they “regard… [him] with peculiar intensity from less than twenty feet away.”

It almost seems as if Doctor T. J. Eckleburg is watching over everything. As stated above, this character never says a word. He is a billboard, there would be no possible way for him to speak. His blue eyes speak for him, and they speak of nothing. They are holding their secrets, never telling what they think, always watching. There is a distance they create, one that keeps anybody who wants to know more away. If anybody looks deeper into the eyes, they will find nothing, as they are nothing more than blue paint on a billboard. This is just like if you look deeper into Gatsby. He is built up to be something great, but in reality he is just another poor boy who worked to become who he is. Gatsby also puts up walls, keeping where his wealth comes from a secret and creating a distance between him and everybody he meets.

Another beautiful way used to symbolize distance is the ocean. In chapter two when the women are talking about the men they find to be worthless Gatsby states that “The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediterranean.” The ocean is used to symbolize the distance the women have put between themselves and the men they are talking about. Myrtle goes so far as to say her husband “wasn’t fit to lick [her] shoe.” This shows how much emotional distance there is between Myrtle and her husband, not to mention the fact she is cheating on him.

In the next chapter when Nick is spending time with Jordan, they look for Gatsby, but they “couldn’t find him from the top of the steps, and he wasn’t on the veranda. On a chance [they] tried an important-looking door, and walked into a high Gothic library, paneled with carved English oak, and probably transported complete from some ruin overseas.” While many would see this as nothing more than Gatsby having nice stuff, it begs some questions. He spends money on things from oversea, yet he is nowhere to be found. Gatsby is the type of person who is punctilious when it come to showing his richness, but when questioned about how it came to be, he is not there. It is not until after his death that the readers learn that Gatsby was from a normal province. He made his own money and worked to get to where he was: “He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.” In the end, one of the final words Nick says about Gatsby was that his dream seemed close to him, but there was an interminable ocean between them. His dream might as well of been defunct with that about of distance between them.

Distance is a funny thing. It can be seen in huge oceans, as well as everyday objects, such as clothes. When Nick meets Myrtle for the first time, he notes that “Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty…” She is wearing a blue dress while she is taken from her home by her secret affair. This is a depressing symbol for the distance she is trying to get rid of. She is stuck with a man she thinks to be below her, wanting a man she is never to get. She later changes into another dress, trying even harder to be better than she is, but the distance between her and Tom is too much for a simple change in clothing to change.

Gatsby also tries to change the distance between him and others with clothing. When Lucille ripped her dress at one of his parties he sent her a new one, but “… it was too big in the bust and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars.” He spends a lot of money on the dress, trying to make up for something, but in the end it still had to be altered. It is just like everything else he does in his life; he tries so hard to reach his dreams, but there is always something stopping him from doing so. Daisy is one of his dreams, one he works the whole book for. When Daisy is meeting him for the first time in years, “A damp streak of hair lay like a dash of blue paint across her cheek, and her hand was wet with glistening drops…” The woman of his dreams, figuratively, has blue across her cheek. This blue marks Daisy as too good for him. There will always be a distance between Daisy and Gatsby, even if he cannot see it.

It would seem as if everybody in the novel has something they yearn for, but shall never get. The color blue is linked to the feeling of sadness in younger years. This novel strengthens that idea; blue is deployed expertly to help the reader detect the distance between people. From a man on a billboard to Gatsby himself, there is always something they cannot have. Moving up classes to being with the one you love, there is always something else standing in your way. The Great Gatsby is a beautiful story that tells us to move on. There is no reason to chase something, somebody, that you cannot have. It will never end well, you may even end up dead, while others will go on with their lives as if nothing happened.