West and East Egg, on the northern shore of Long Island, are thought to be disguised versions of Great Neck and Manor Haven/Sands Point, both famous in the Jazz Age for wealth and luxury. Far enough outside the bustle of New York City, here the wealthy could have their space and waterfront views.

"It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York - and where there are,among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the nost domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemispere,the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals - like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end - but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead."

 Lands End in Long Island, which is considered to be the inspiration for Tom and Daisy Buchanan`s East Egg house ( demolished in 2011)

 Beacon Towers is considered to be inspiration for Jay Gatsby`s extravagent West Egg nouveau riche house (demolished in the 1940s).

Beacon Towers was a Gilded Age mansion that was situated on Sands Point in the village of Sands Point on the North Shore of Long Island, New York. It was designed by Hunt & Hunt, formed by the partnership of Richard Morris Hunt’s sons Richard and Joseph. It was the last house on Long Island to be designed by the firm.

Architectural historians have described the mansion as a pure Gothic fantasy, although it did owe some of its design elements to the alcazars of Spain and to depictions of castles in medieval illuminated manuscripts. The interior contained approximately 60 primary rooms and upwards of 140 in total. 

The mansion is thought by literary scholars to have played a part in the inspiration for the home of Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald described Gatsby’s mansion in the book as:

"A factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin bead of raw ivy, and marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of land."

 http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7363006n

 Serena Altschul visits the house that inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald's great American novel "The Great Gatsby" to discuss its storied past with owner Bert Brodsky and what may become of the land after the house is knocked down having being beaten beyond repair by the Long Island sound.

Color symbolism

Color* symbolism in The Great Gatsby

"and covered the table 

in many colored disarray ... 

in coral and apple-green 

and lavender and faint orange, 

with monograms 

of Indian blue".

*I spell the word "color" without a "u" on purpose, like Americans do. 

Here is just a short list of colors and the examples of their usage. I will enrich it while I`m struggling my way trough the text. Frankly speaking, I`m really struggling, trying to go behind the author`s words, making notes and reading some material concerning extra-linguistic aspects...It`s really time-consuming...So, let`s start!

Golden stands for 1) richness 2) happy or prosperous: golden days, golden age 3) successful: the golden girl of tennis 4) extremely valuable: a golden opportunity At Gatsby's parties even the turkeys turn to gold. "..turkeys bewitched to a dark gold". Jordan Baker - the golden girl of golf - is associated with that color. "With Jordan's slender golden arm resting in mine"; "I put my arm around Jordan's golden shoulder". With a few sentences Fitzgerald throws a light at the turbulent months while Daisy is waiting for Gatsby during the war. "All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the "Beale Street Blues" while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the grey tea hour ...". Here even the dust in the rooms, usually grey, is shining, while the usually golden tea is served at the grey tea hour. We find that contrast between golden and grey once more in "we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with grey-turning, gold-turning light".

Silver represents jewelry and richness. In The Great Gatsby the moon or moonlight or the stars are often silver: "the silver pepper of the stars"; "The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales"; "A silver curve of the moon hovered already in the western sky". "...and Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and golden colored tie, hurried in."

Sometimes the gold at Gatsby's house turns to yellow. Thus the richness is only a cover, a short sensation, like the yellow press for the more offensively sensational press. "now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music". In contrast to the golden girl Jordan, her admirers are only yellow. "two girls in twin yellow dresses"; "You don't know who we are, said one of the girls in yellow, but we met you here about a month ago." "... we sat down at a table with the two girls in yellow".

White stands for 1) morally unblemished 2) honorable  When Nick Carraway visited the Buchanan he met two young women, of course Daisy and Jordan "They were both in white". Even the windows at Daisy's house are white "The windows were ajar and gleaming white". "Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white" (Daisy and Jordan). Carraway came for the party at Gatsby`s house "dressed up in white flannels". Gatsby was wearing "a white flannel suit" during their first meeting with Daisy at Nick`s place. Green stands for a variety of meanings, but Fitzgerald used it mainly for "not faded", like in "a green old age", or for hope. "I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light". This green light is across the sea where Buchanan's house is supposed to be. Gatsby said: "You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock"; "Now it was again a green light on a dock"; "...when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock"; "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us". Later the whole water between Gatsby and Daisy gets green "On the green Sound, stagnant in the heat...".

Grey is often used for neutral, dull, not important. "grey little villages in France"; "The grey windows disappeared" (at Gatsby's house); "... a grey, florid man with a hard, empty face" about the portrait of Dan Cody in Gatsby's bedroom. Gatsby's ideal is grey and empty. The Wilsons, living in the valley of ashes, appear in grey, except for Myrtle, when she enjoys the company of Tom Buchanan. Wilson "mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity – except his wife, who moved close to Tom". The only way for Myrtle to get out of the grey seems to be Tom Buchanan.

Blue is the color of being depressed, moody, or unhappy. Therefore a lot of things around Gatsby are blue. "In his blue gardens men and girls came and went". Although a lot of people are in and around his house, his gardens are blue. "... ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves", of course in Gatsby's gardens.

Pink  Sometimes Gatsby comes up with the color pink. "the luminosity of his pink suit under the moon" (Gatsby). When Gatsby and Daisy are finally together, "there was a pink and golden billow of foamy clouds above the sea".

Red associated with live, joy, love, shame, and rage. The inside of Buchanan's home is in red. "We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space"; "Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light".  From time to time I come across some peculiar colors such as: "A chauffeur in a uniform of robin`s egg blue...", Daisy is wearing "a three-corned lavender hat"...  Even odors have their own colors: "the pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the-gate"

The cover of the first printing

      I'm crazy about art, it takes my breath away...I spend nights trying to find the right shade of cobalt colour or iron red, sketching and expressing the ideas boiling in my head. That's why I can't help but devote my first post to the design of the cover of the first printing of The Great Gatsby.

      In fact it's among the most celebrated pieces of art in American literature. It depicts disembodied eyes and a mouth over a blue skyline, with images of naked women reflected in the irises. A little-known artist named Francis Cugat was commissioned to illustrate the book while Fitzgerald was in the midst of writing it. The cover was completed before the novel; Fitzgerald was so enamored with it that he told his publisher he had "written it into" the novel. Fitzgerald's remarks about incorporating the painting into the novel led to the interpretation that the eyes are reminiscent of those of fictional optometrist Dr. T. J. Eckleburg (depicted on a faded commercial billboard near George Wilson's auto repair shop) which Fitzgerald described as "blue and gigantic — their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose." Although this passage has some resemblance to the painting, a closer explanation can be found in the description of Daisy Buchanan as the "girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs." Ernest Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast that when Fitzgerald lent him a copy of The Great Gatsby to read, he immediately disliked the cover, but "Scott told me not to be put off by it, that it had to do with a billboard along a highway in Long Island that was important in the story. He said he had liked the jacket and now he didn't like it."