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IMPORTANT:

This is a direct quote from sparknotes for The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is a very unusual metaphor. I think it represents how many people feel about God, as though He is watching but that He does not help them. Use the information below to write a quick paragraph.

The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg

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 8, when he imagines Gatsby’s final thoughts as a depressed consideration of the emptiness of symbols and dreams.

(I personally disagree with F. Scott Fitzgerld's metaphor, but his wife Zelda went insane. He felt abandoned by God.)