The Great Gatsby Chapter 2: The Valley of Ashes (Close Reading)

“About half way between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes — a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight. But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic — their irises are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.”

Adjectives Meanings Powdery Grey Ash-grey Leaden Obscure Grotesque Desolate Invisible All negative tones Indicate hopelessness and despair Modifiers

Adverbs Meanings Hastily Occasionally Already Immediately Endlessly All are time markers Involve paradoxes Allusions to time bear out hopelessness of the American dream Modifiers

Connections T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” (1922) Images of spiritual sterility in the description of the Valley of Ashes mirror Eliot’s images of spiritual sterility of the desert in “The Wasteland” Pit where industrial waste is offloaded—the detritus of an industrialized nation People who live there are cast off/separated from the American Dream

Geographic Symbolism East Egg = old money West Egg = new money Valley of Ashes = no money Valley of Ashes situated beyond West Egg—declining ladder of social possibility. All is sterile and nonproductive; it is a wasteland where nothing can prosper Death of the American dream

Analogy The sterility and emptiness of the Valley of Ashes is analogous to Tom/Daisy/Jordan’s spiritual sterility or emptiness. Their lives are built without a solid foundation of values or beliefs; in essence, their lives are built on ashes.

T.J. Eckleburg Appears right before Nick and Tom arrive at Wilson’s garage Appears as well when Tom comments the Valley of Ashes is a “terrible place”; answers Tom with a frown. Both times indicate all-seeing eyes looking on immoral acts (Tom’s adultery and Nick’s accessory role) Nick expresses his disgust with Tom indirectly through T.J. Eckleburg

T.J. Eckleburg Highly symbolic; one of three major symbols in the novel. Disputes over its precise meaning; however, all critics agree it exists as an indictment of the American Dream.

Possible Symbolic Meanings “[A] symbol of the advertising industry— [a] business dedicated to persuasion through fallacies and exaggeration” –Cantebury The dead eyes of failed commercialism Failed, dead God; a delusion of spirituality that looks over a wasteland Hope sullied or wounded by greed and materialism

Color Symbolism Blue is associated with the promise or dream that Gatsby mistakes for reality/possibility Yellow is associated with materialism, gold, greed, and defeat of dreams Pure blue of the eyes has faded The blue is encircled or trapped by yellow spectacles