"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 transcen- dent 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-grey 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…" (p.23)
In F. Scott Fiztgerald's The Great Gatsby the color gray symbolizes the ethical, moral, social and even economic deterioration in America. All the ashes and residues from the wealthy industry have come to rest upon the Valley of Ashes making it gray. People selfishly sought great wealth and were careless about the repercussions of their ambitions and the poor ended up covered by their wastes. In the Valley of Ashes even people look gray and are covered by gray dust: most of them poor. There was nothing worthwhile in the Valley of Ashes all along the novel. Just lust, death, loneliness and as its color suggest's, darkness. Two characters are presented to live in this dark area and both of them ended up losing everything. Myrtle Wilson was killed in the valley after she tried to walk away from her husband because he discovered she was unfaithful and he committed suicide after killing his wife's supposed killer. The desolate, gray valley was unremembered by everyone because they found no interest (money) in it, just darkness.
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