The Great Gatsby

I read this book today.  It was pretty cool, and I can see why everyone loves it.  But one thing I never got was what the fuck the deal was with the giant billboard of "Doctor T. J. Eckleberg" was supposed to be.  The whole book just kept mentioning it but nobody ever talked about it, only the garage shop owner motioning at them when talking about the eyes of God.

Maybe because they're both stationary and merely representative of a seperate entity that put it up there for the purpose of attracting attention to whatever it is.
Doc Eckle's something or other, I forget what it was an ad for exactly but still some company put it up there, and the church put out countless copies of the bible. The people of the T J Eckleburg deal want you to think their product can do whatever, and the church wants you to think they have the redline to this thing "god." Neither of the images presented actually do anything other than be seen and whether or not any message is brought across to anyone is dependant on the individual, but everyone within eyeshot of both of them are subjected to the presentation.

The only thing is, this isn't the answer your teacher is looking for, and what it is exactly I forget but I believe its something about the growth and subsequent growth of representation of the corporations in America at that time. Good luck.

I always thought that the TJ Eckleburg sign was a metaphore of how God was looking down on the sinners in The Great Gatsby. But Anon's explenation above me sounds good too.

Those eyes are one of the best parts of the novel.  To expand upon what 2 said, symbols in The Great Gatsby are cool because they derive their meaning from their effect on the characters and the reader.  The eyes are looking over the "valley of ashes" and represent god's judgement.  But as they are actually an advertisement built by man, they also reinforce the fact that society constructs judgements, such as those that deem Gatsby's wealth disreputable and Tom's respectable.

Crazy man sees something as symbolic = Fitzgerald's idea that individual items are bestowed with meaning depending on the person. Perception changes from one person to the next, so the mass amount of the accumulation of items and riches shown to be the American Dream in the novel could be utterly worthless to someone else. At the end of the day, those who have succeeded in the achievement of the American Dream are left with items that are only given meaning because of the society surrounding them.

This means that the American Dream is self-propogating, which in conjunction with the rest of the negative things perpetuated about the American Dream, just serves to further Fitzy's idea that the American Dream is a warped ideal which only serves to encourage the wanton pursuit of items and riches beyond all other goals.

Anonymous is insightful.

The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They may represent God staring down upon and judging American society as a moral wasteland, though the novel never makes this point explicitly. Instead, throughout the novel, Fitzgerald suggests that symbols only have meaning because characters instill them with meaning. The connection between the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg and God exists only in George Wilson’s grief-stricken mind. This lack of concrete significance contributes to the unsettling nature of the image. Thus, the eyes also come to represent the essential meaninglessness of the world and the arbitrariness of the mental process by which people invest objects with meaning. Nick explores these ideas in Chapter VIII, when he imagines Gatsby’s final thoughts as a depressed consideration of the emptiness of symbols and dreams.

It's a billboard in brooklyn. Stop doin that analyzing thing.

^

Queens actually. :P

The Great Gatsby is all about symbols and analogies, so whoever said stop analyzing is a retard and does not belong in this forum.

i hates that book. sam i am is betterer.