~ Inseparable from Tragedy~
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The concealed and secluded Valley of Ashes, as an area eliminated and detested by both the general residents of the East and West Eggs, provides itself both as a graphical and symbolic setting with its representative ashes and dust from the industrial era to support many of the principal events which act as the leading causes in changes of plot mood and developments of the dominant characters in The Great Gatsby. As this area first enters the narrator Nick Carraway's eyes "ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight" (27) implies a definition or description of the valley inhabited with low-class workers using "ash-grey" and "cloud that screens" to introduce the smoggy view of that area and it's people. Ashes and dust define the Valley of Ashes with buildings and leftover debris from the industrial times covering and, in a way, building up the entire area, giving it its vast distinction from the East and West Eggs. Such uses of darker color shades assist in presenting readers with a significant alteration compared to the environment of the East Egg, full of luxurious architecture where Nick Carraway had just been visiting the Buchanans.
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Lacking hope and construction, this dreary Valley of Ashes symbolizes most of its inhabitants: pessimistic, pitiful, and poor. As an important character who intertwines the entire novel and characters together, Myrtle Wilson is also an influential representation of the valley and its residents with her never-ending dreaming and a desperation to succeed and with her unpredictable sorrowful death as well. "Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick, dark blood with the dust...as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long" (144-145). This imagery of Myrtle's death deep in detail of her lifeless body being reconnected with dusts not only emphasizes her tragic life with the tragedy following upon her death but also symbolizes her forever imprisonment with the low social status. As much as Myrtle had been determined into changing her life and escaping poverty, destiny planned another path and such a path led to her final punishment for escaping. The character of Myrtle symbolizes a countering theme to the American Dream and success; Myrtle never succeeded and her dream to abandon poverty had been a failure as well.