In order for him to invoke an emotional understanding, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s prose adheres to the notion of objective correlative in several scenes. These scenes that Fitzgerald utilizes in The Great Gatsby run parallel to the emotion he wants to convey. The language and the descriptive quality of the words the author uses to describe the scenes express emotion. The conveyed mood of emptiness or desolation invokes a feeling of meaninglessness and purposelessness. The mood is manifested through the emptiness in the scenes of “the valley of ashes” and “Gatsby’s party.”
The most symbolic and moving scene Fitzgerald creates is the “valley of ashes” which brazenly expresses a mood of desolation. Fitzgerald creates a place “about half way between West Egg and East Egg and New York [where] the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land” (p. 27). This “desolate” area of land that Fitzgerald describes is where the hard working class lives. These people work hard at their jobs, earn money and make the world turn. The author does not need to introduce a character from the “valley of ashes” to the reader for them to understand what the people are like because they are described as “ash-grey men” (p. 27). Ash-grey gives a notion of an undefined identity and a lack of individuality as if all the people are unable to express emotion. Remembering the poem by T.S. Elliot, “The Wasteland,” Fitzgerald chooses words such as “dimly” and “crumbling” to convey the emotion of desolation. The author distinguishes this place as 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 transcending effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air” (p. 27). Again, Fitzgerald leaves the reader and impression of emptiness and meaninglessness....