"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. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night" (180).
In
The Great Gatsby we encounter Fitzgerald's heavy use of symbolism as he utilizes colors to give further on depth to the text. Several colors are used throughout the book but the color blue and how Fitzgerald uses it to express specific emotions really captured my attention. In the quote above Fitzgerald touches on the color blue which we see exemplifying emotions such as sadness or unhappiness. People often make reference to the fact they're feeling blue meaning their unhappy or sad. Here as Nick sees Gatsby's tomb in the cemetery he makes reference to the "this blue lawn" presenting the image of sadness and unhappiness surrounding his burial sight. Many things around Gatsby were represented by the color blue as the lawn in his back yard was also characterized by this color. It just represents how unhappy he really was on the inside and how he surrounded himself with these superficial people to create this illusion that he wasn't all on his own. All around Gatsby was a blue character and as he laid dead in his tomb the lawn around him remained blue.
