Color in The Great Gatsby

“She dressed in white, and had a little white roadster, and all day long the telephone rang in her house and excited young officers from Camp Taylor demanded the privilege of monopolizing her that night.” (Pg. 96)

“…High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl…” (Pg. 154)

F. Scott Fitzgerald uses descriptions that are very detailed to orient the reader throughout The Great Gatsby.  He especially focuses on the use of colors to illustrate a certain atmosphere or cue a certain connotation.  The use of the color white throughout the novel is used in its traditional form.  That is to say, it symbolizes honesty, honor, and purity.  When describing Daisy, a character that is supposedly honorable, beautiful and morally unblemished, Fitzgerald repeatedly uses the color white.  Daisy is described as a "golden girl" in a "white palace" because she is royalty, yet she is pure.  An interesting way to put it is that the color white is transparent.  Fitzgerald describes Daisy's house, car, clothes and more as "white," no more than that.  When he calls upon white there is no need for adjectives or descriptions, it tells the reader that Daisy was elegant and pure. This can be proven by the excerpt from page 96 when Daisy is made out to be the most popular girl in town, and her entire lifestyle at age eighteen can and is brought down to the word white by Jordan, the person telling the story.  The color white in The Great Gatsby is used to denote honor, which is precisely why it is never used to describe Gatsby himself.  Overall, Fitzgerald's use of colors points the reader in a certain direction, if one were to keep track of every use of every color one would be able to create a new definition of white, or blue, or black, specifically for this book; and yet, every color is so broad, that he leaves the reader wanting more depiction.