Vision, insight and morality

• Valley of Ashes: Presided over by the ubiquitous Dr TJ Eckleburg
• 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 transcendent effort, of ash-gray men who move dimly and al- ready crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawl along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from you
• But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over

  it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg (p.23)
• Critics have noted similarities between the eyes of Dr. Eckleburg and Fitzgerald's description of the anonymous Owl Eyes who first appears in Gatsby's library and later at his graveside. It is Owl Eyes who murmurs the eulogy of "The poor son-of-a-bitch" at Gatsby's grave (p. 176). William Goldhurst believes that Dr. Eckleburg's presence in the novel is to "symbolise some implacable (Unforgiving) deity (God)."
• This has credence, for George Wilson, Myrtle's husband, refers to Dr. Eckleburg as the eyes of God. "God sees everything," Wilson tells Michaelis when commenting on his conversation with Myrtle concerning her infidelity (p. 160).
• But what of the valley of ashes itself? There are strong overtones of T. S. Eliot's Waste Land here, and rightfully so, for the world of Gatsby is a spiritual wasteland-materialistic and mortal, and by its very nature doomed to ashes. One critic has noted that Fitzgerald may have had the "Valley of Hinnon" in mind when he created the valley of ashes.6 Hinnon is the Old Testament name for the city dump outside the walls of Jerusalem. Once fertile, it was defiled by the worship of false gods and turned into ashes by God in his wrath.