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    Andrea Yao-Significance of The Valley of Ashes

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    The passage provides an analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald's portrayal of the Valley of Ashes in his novel The Great Gatsby. It describes the Valley of Ashes as a dusty dump for industrial waste that represents the hopeless lives of the poor who cannot achieve the American Dream. Fitzgerald uses bleak and dreary language to set a melancholy tone and depict the atrocious living conditions. A key symbol is the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, which loom over the valley in a billboard and represent the idea of a lifeless God observing the demise of American society and providing no help to the people. The passage examines how Fitzgerald uses the valley and the eyes as symbols of the destruction of the ideal

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    Andrea Yao-Significance of The Valley of Ashes

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    The passage provides an analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald's portrayal of the Valley of Ashes in his novel The Great Gatsby. It describes the Valley of Ashes as a dusty dump for industrial waste that represents the hopeless lives of the poor who cannot achieve the American Dream. Fitzgerald uses bleak and dreary language to set a melancholy tone and depict the atrocious living conditions. A key symbol is the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, which loom over the valley in a billboard and represent the idea of a lifeless God observing the demise of American society and providing no help to the people. The passage examines how Fitzgerald uses the valley and the eyes as symbols of the destruction of the ideal

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    The passage provides an analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald's portrayal of the Valley of Ashes in his novel The Great Gatsby. It describes the Valley of Ashes as a dusty dump for industrial waste that represents the hopeless lives of the poor who cannot achieve the American Dream. Fitzgerald uses bleak and dreary language to set a melancholy tone and depict the atrocious living conditions. A key symbol is the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, which loom over the valley in a billboard and represent the idea of a lifeless God observing the demise of American society and providing no help to the people. The passage examines how Fitzgerald uses the valley and the eyes as symbols of the destruction of the ideal

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    52 views2 pages

    Andrea Yao-Significance of The Valley of Ashes

    Uploaded by

    api-525293444
    The passage provides an analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald's portrayal of the Valley of Ashes in his novel The Great Gatsby. It describes the Valley of Ashes as a dusty dump for industrial waste that represents the hopeless lives of the poor who cannot achieve the American Dream. Fitzgerald uses bleak and dreary language to set a melancholy tone and depict the atrocious living conditions. A key symbol is the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, which loom over the valley in a billboard and represent the idea of a lifeless God observing the demise of American society and providing no help to the people. The passage examines how Fitzgerald uses the valley and the eyes as symbols of the destruction of the ideal

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    Andrea Yao

    Significance of the Valley of Ashes

    The author of this book, F. Scott Fitzgerald, sets a melancholic view about the heavy
    burden called the Valley of Ashes. This place is literally defined by its dusty look, it is where the
    trash from the city’s industries are dumped. This area represents the forgotten poor people who
    do not have the benefits of being wealthy. The alley, on the other hand, includes the brooding
    eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg. Its pair of eyes give the readers an eerie picture painted in their
    minds, knowing that those eyes can mean more than just an advertisement. This hopeless setting
    becomes a place where the American dream is unachievable.
    Fitzgerald maintains the use of diction to define this mournful setting. Words such as:
    “grotesque and…powdery air” is used to help readers visualize the atrocious conditions of this
    town. These words also describe things that are dirty and monotonous because the valley of
    ashes is known to define hopelessness. Furthermore, Fitzgerald continuously expresses phrases
    like: “bleak dust which drift endlessly”, “rising smoke”,and “line of grey cars”. The purpose of
    this is to captivate death because of the people living there. These poor unfortunate souls inhabit
    the feeling of death due to the fact that they can never truly be wealthy. The valley of ashes is
    located right between the places where the wealthiest people live and work. New York is full of
    wealthy aristocrats, but right in the middle is this saddening dump. It produces a sharp contrast
    between the atmosphere of lavish attention and moderate ones. This valley disassembles the facts
    of the American Dream because it leaves people living miserable lives instead of enjoying it.
    The eyes of T.J. Eckleburg is an advertising billboard in the valley of ashes. Even though
    the idea of Eckleburg’s eyes may seem bizarre in the first place, it represents the idea of God. Its
    eyes sit and stare while watching people destroy everything. His eyes “brood on over the sole
    dumping ground” depicts a lifeless persona. The fact that it sits over the valley, the eyes try to
    examine the American society. This advertisement simply manifest God and, likewise, the death
    of the American society. Fitzgerald establishes the concept of Eckleburg’s eyes within the valley
    of ashes because those two compliment each other. The fact that people of low income live in the
    valley while God is supposedly watching them builds the idea of “eternal blindness”.
    Correspondingly, God observes the emptiness in people’s ruins, neither giving them solace nor
    assistance.
    The use of symbolism in this passage reveals the thought of the American dream.
    Fitzgerald adds other themes like: wealth, society, and class to admire the destruction of this
    challenging yet unachievable dream. The valley of ashes is an ideal example of a scene of utter
    desolation, while a pair of eyes inspects this wasteland without doing anything at all. The
    hypocrisy of this ideology remains current because Americans idealize wealth and upward social
    mobility.
    Great Gatsby Paper 1 Feedback:

    - This paper is a passage analysis


    - Write about the passage itself
    - It is often hard to tell what is symbolic by reading a passage alone
    - Avoid talking about symbolism
    - This is a timed passage, be aware of the passage
    - DO NOT use first-person point of view while writing about this passage
    - Use literary terms if you’re running out of words
    - Do a timed practice passage; set a time for 85 minutes and go over annotating then write
    about the passage
    - Using the author’s name is helpful
    - Tone is the author’s attitude
    - Mood is the feeling created
    - Atmosphere is similar to the mood
    - “In the passage”
    - Use the author’s name for thesis
    - Use an adjective before the word “diction”
    - There are no people in books, only characters
    - Return back to the author when you’re ending an essay
    - Make sure you return everything to the thesis
    - Add an analysis after each paragraph
    -

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