Does Daisy love Gatsby or Tom? Why does Tom insist on switching cars with Gatsby when they go to the city? Why is Nick the narrator of the story? Why does Tom bring up race so often? Why is Myrtle attracted to Tom? Why does Gatsby stop throwing parties? Literary Devices Symbols. The Valley of Ashes First introduced in Chapter 2, the valley of ashes between West Egg and New York City consists of a long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes.
The Eyes of Doctor T. Eckleburg The eyes of Doctor T. Previous section Motifs Next section Protagonist. The second time T. Eckleburg's eyes appear, Tom, Nick, and Jordan are stopping at Wilson's garage on their way to Manhattan to have it out with Daisy and Gatsby. We were all irritable now with the fading ale and, aware of it, we drove for a while in silence.
Then as Doctor T. Eckleburg's faded eyes came into sight down the road, I remembered Gatsby's caution about gasoline…. That locality was always vaguely disquieting, even in the broad glare of afternoon, and now I turned my head as though I had been warned of something behind.
Over the ashheaps the giant eyes of Doctor T. Eckleburg kept their vigil but I perceived, after a moment, that other eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity from less than twenty feet away. In one of the windows over the garage the curtains had been moved aside a little and Myrtle Wilson was peering down at the car. This time, the eyes are a warning to Nick that something is wrong.
He thinks the problem is that the car is low on gas, but as we learn, the real problem at the garage is that George Wilson has found out that Myrtle is having an affair.
Of course, Nick is quickly distracted from the billboard's "vigil" by the fact that Myrtle is staring at the car from the room where George has imprisoned her.
She is holding her own "vigil" of sorts, staring out the window at what she thinks is the yellow car of Tom, her would-be savior, and also giving Jordan a death stare under the misguided impression that Jordan is Daisy. The word "vigil" is important here. It refers to staying awake for a religious purpose, or to keep watch over a stressful and significant time. Here, though, both of those meanings don't quite apply, and the word is used sarcastically.
The billboard eyes can't interact with the characters, but they do point to—or stand in for—a potential higher authority whose "brooding" and "caution" could also be accompanied by judgment. Their useless vigil is echoed by Myrtle's mistaken one—she is vigilant enough to spot Tom driving, but she is wrong to put her trust in him. Later, this trust in Tom and the yellow car is what gets her killed.
Our last visit to the eyes happens during a private moment between the coffee shop owner Michaelis and George Wilson. Since Nick isn't actually there, this must be Nick's version of Michaelis's testimony to the police after the murder-suicide.
Maybe even if you haven't been there for a long time? Maybe I could call up the church and get a priest to come over and he could talk to you, see? Wilson's glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small grey clouds took on fantastic shape and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind.
I took her to the window--" With an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it, "--and I said 'God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing.
You may fool me but you can't fool God! Standing behind him Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T. Eckleburg which had just emerged pale and enormous from the dissolving night. Something made him turn away from the window and look back into the room. But Wilson stood there a long time, his face close to the window pane, nodding into the twilight. Here, finally, the true meaning of the odd billboard that everyone finds so disquieting is revealed. To the unhinged George Wilson , first totally distraught over Myrtle's affair and then driven past his breaking point by her death, the billboard's eyes are a watchful God.
Wilson doesn't go to church, and thus doesn't have access to the moral instruction that will help him control his darker impulses. Still, it seems that Wilson wants God, or at least a God-like influence, in his life—based on him trying to convert the watching eyes of the billboard into a God that will make Myrtle feel bad about "everything [she's] been doing. In the way George stares "into the twilight" by himself, there is an echo of what we've often seen Gatsby doing—staring at the green light on Daisy's dock.
Both men want something unreachable, and both imbue ordinary objects with overwhelming amounts of meaning. Even when characters reach out for a guiding truth in their lives, not only are they denied one, but they are also led instead toward tragedy. The characters have no access to any of these. In the world of The Great Gatsby , there is no moral center.
Every character is shown to be selfish, delusional, or violent. Even Nick, who, as our narrator, is ostensibly meant to reflect on who is good and who is bad, turns out to be kind of a misogynist bigot. It's not surprising that none of these characters is shown to have faith of any kind. The closest any of them come to being led by an outside force, or voice of authority, is when Tom seems swayed by the super racist arguments of a book about how minorities are about to overwhelm whites.
So it makes sense that Nick, whose job it is to watch everyone else and describe their actions, pays attention to something else that seems to also be watching—the billboard with the eyes of Doctor T. The billboard watches the site of the novel's biggest moral failures. On a more local level, the garage is the place where Daisy kills Myrtle. But on a bigger scale, the "ash heaps" of Queens show what happens to those who cannot succeed in the ambitious, self-serving, predatory world of the Roaring 20's that Fitzgerald finds so objectionable.
The problem, of course, is that this billboard, this completely inanimate object, cannot stand in for a civilizing and moral influence , however much the characters who notice it cower under its gaze. Tom frowns when he feels himself being watched, but this feeling does not alter his actions in any way. Wilson wants Myrtle to be shaken up by the idea of this watcher, a God-like presence that is unfoolable, but she is also undeterred. Even Wilson himself, who seems to feel the billboard is some kind of brake on his inner turmoil, is easily persuaded that it's just "an advertisement," and so nothing stands in the way of his violent acting out.
Like Gatsby, who is also compared to "the advertisement of the man" 7. People want to read God or at least an overseeing presence into it, but, in the end, they are simply externalizing their anxiety about the moral vacuum at the center of their world. Struggling with distance learning? Themes All Themes. Symbols All Symbols. Theme Wheel. Everything you need for every book you read. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive.
The eyes of Doctor T. Eckleburg on the billboard overlooking the Valley of Ashes represent many things at once: to Nick they seem to symbolize the haunting waste of the past, which lingers on though it is irretrievably vanished, much like Dr. Eckleburg's medical practice. The eyes can also be linked to Gatsby , whose own eyes, once described as "vacant," often stare out, blankly keeping "vigil" a word Fitzgerald applies to both Dr. Eckleburg's eyes and Gatsby's over Long Island sound and the green light.
To George Wilson , Dr. Eckleburg's eyes are the eyes of God, which he says see everything. The Eyes of Doctor T. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:.
Chapter 2 Quotes. But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high.
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