Throughout the "The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts the decaying of social and moral values through his use of symbolism and characterization. During the totality of novel, symbolism is used as a vehicle of depravity. Fitzgerald illustrates the decaying ethics and morals upheld by those of the era with a wide variety of unexpected figures. In Chapter 2, Fitzgerald brings Nick and Tom to New York so that Nick can meet Tom’s “girl”. While in New York the three go to Tom’s apartment he’s bought specifically for his affair. “At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses” (Fitzgerald, 32). The use of the word ‘cake’ places a different emphasis on the apartment and makes the reader analyze it in the form of food. Generally, because a cake has an attractive appearance from the outside with the frosting and decorations, the inside of it is completely different. The apartment building in New York holds up to that symbolism of the literal cake in the sense that from the outside it has a white color, which means morally unblemished, though on inside, it’s overly furnished “so that to move about was to stumble continually”(Fitzgerald, 33). It becomes apparent with the apartment that everything is for appearance and it all has become a façade. During Chapter 3, the many people at Gatsby’s party all symbolize the decaying social values that are attempted to be sustained in the summer of 1922. With all of the drunken debauchery amidst the “amusement park” of a party, a set of girls in yellow dresses stand out. “A pair of stage ‘twins’- who turned out to be the girls in yellow- did a baby act in costume and champagne was served in bigger than finger bowls” (Fitzgerald, 51). Having the two girls wear yellow in the novel, Fitzgerald places an emphasis on moral corruption they emanate at Gatsby’s party. Their baby act “in costume” also shows the literal venee