What are some symbols in Chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby?

Some symbols that dominate in this chapter are colors (especially yellow), automobiles, and eyes. Each of these carries throughout the novel, reappearing in various forms. Yellow is a symbolic color in this chapter, representing luxury, decadence, and moral ambiguity. Incidentally, yellow is also the color of decay, of decadence. Gatsby’s station wagon scampers “like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains”. Food offerings include “turkeys bewitched to a dark gold.” The orchestra plays “yellow cocktail music,” and the setting is “gaudy with primary colors”, with enough “colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden.” Two girls at Nick’s table wear “twin yellow dresses,” and Jordan rests her “slender golden arm” on Nick’s.

The dominant symbol, perhaps equally important as the green light, is the automobile. The society obsessed with driving and the recklessness with people’s lives and morals, parallels the theme concerning wasted potential and wasted goodness. In addition to Gatsby’s yellow station wagon, his Rolls-Royce becomes an “omnibus,” bearing guests to and from the city. Cars at the party are “parked five deep in the drive.” The one in which Owl Eyes was a passenger is a “new coupé” with the wheel detached. The very drunk guest insists he was not driving, that he knows next to nothing about driving. This accident seems to foreshadow the later one when Daisy is driving the “death car” which kills Myrtle. Another automobile accident involved Tom and a chambermaid at the Santa Barbara hotel where he and Daisy were staying three months after they were married. He “ran into a wagon on the Ventura road” and “ripped a front wheel off his car.” Additionally, Jordan leaves a borrowed car out in the rain with the top down.

The drunken Owl Eyes also seems to repeat the motif of the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg. The emphasis on eyes, later equated by George with the eyes of God, unites with the message hinted at through automobiles. this message suggests the dangers of drinking. At this particular party, “the bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden.” Champagne is “served in glasses bigger than finger bowls.” Still, although the bar is crowded, “Gatsby was not there.” The fact that he does not drink sets him apart from guests like Owl Eyes who boasts of having been drunk “for about a week now.” Prohibition, the law of the land, is ignored. Yet, rumors, undoubtedly to some extent based on fact, picture Gatsby as a bootlegger. To provide the liquor is as immoral as drinking it during prohibition.