The Billboard Eyes (T.J. Eckleburg) Symbol Analysis in The Chosen and the Beautiful
Introduction: A Billboard That Refuses to See—Until Jordan Makes It Speak
In Nghi Vo's The Chosen and the Beautiful, the iconic billboard eyes of T.J. Eckleburg are no longer a passive, godlike observer from Fitzgerald's original novel. Instead, they become a mutable, paper-thin presence that Jordan Baker actively alters—cutting a mouth into the advertisement and forcing it to testify. This transformation turns the symbol from a silent emblem of consumerism and surveillance into a fragile, imperfect witness, one that ultimately peels away to reveal another layer of commercial illusion. The billboard's evolution mirrors the novel's broader concerns with identity, memory, and the corrosive power of wealth, while also serving as a site where Jordan exercises her own paper magic and agency.
The Billboard as a Physical Object and Its Recurrence
The billboard is a giant advertisement for an optician, T.J. Eckleburg, featuring a pair of painted eyes. It looms over the ash heaps near Willets Point, a desolate industrial wasteland where New York's refuse accumulates. In the novel, the eyes first appear in Chapter Nineteen, when Jordan, Nick, and Tom drive past on their way back from the city. Jordan notes that the eyes are now closed, “sightless, spectacled,” and “refused to look any further” (Chapter 19). This is a significant departure from the original text, where the eyes are typically described as watching over the valley of ashes. Here, they are shut, suggesting a willful blindness to the suffering below.
The billboard recurs in Chapter Twenty, when Jordan, intoxicated by demoniac, wanders through the ash palaces and comes to the billboard. She finds the eyes still closed and, frustrated by their silence, decides to give them a mouth. Using a shard of glass from a smashed bottle, she cuts a crude mouth into the paper, then commands the eyes to speak. The eyes slowly open, and the paper lips begin to flap, revealing a fragment of what they witnessed: a car speeding, a woman thrown into the air, and then “eyes” (Chapter 20). After this confession, the eyes close again, and the paper begins to peel away, exposing an older advertisement for the Bonney Brothers' Traveling Circus.
The billboard is mentioned again in Chapter Twenty-One, when Khai tells Jordan that she visited him in a dream involving “the billboard she damaged” (Chapter 21). This confirms that Jordan's act of cutting the billboard has lasting consequences, at least in the dream logic of the novel. Finally, in Chapter Twenty-Three, Jordan returns to Willets Point and encounters Myrtle Wilson's ghost, though the billboard itself is not explicitly mentioned. The recurrence of the billboard across these chapters establishes it as a touchstone for Jordan's journey, from passive observer to active participant in shaping the stories around her.
From Silent Advertisement to Forced Witness
The billboard's meaning shifts dramatically through Jordan's intervention. Initially, it is a hollow commercial object—an advertisement that promises vision but delivers nothing. Its closed eyes suggest a refusal to engage with the world, a kind of corporate indifference. Jordan, however, treats it as a potential oracle. She demands, “Speak. You see so much, what’s the point of you if you don’t speak?” (Chapter 20). Her act of cutting a mouth is a violent, creative gesture that forces the inanimate to communicate.
When the eyes finally open, they do not offer a comprehensive truth. They report only a fragmented vision: a car, a woman flying, and then “eyes.” This is a direct reference to Myrtle Wilson's death, which occurred earlier in the novel. The billboard's testimony is partial and ambiguous—it sees the accident but cannot identify the driver or the meaning of the “eyes” it saw. This limitation underscores the novel's skepticism about any single, authoritative perspective. The eyes are paper, after all, and their knowledge is as fragile and incomplete as the material they are made of.
Moreover, the billboard's speech is short-lived. After its confession, the eyes close and the paper peels away, revealing the circus advertisement beneath. This layering suggests that the billboard is just one surface in a palimpsest of commercial messages, each covering the last. The eyes' moment of revelation is ephemeral, and the underlying ad—for acrobats, freaks, and lion tamers—offers a different kind of spectacle, one that is equally hollow. The billboard thus becomes a symbol of the transient nature of truth and the relentless replacement of one illusion by another.
The Eyes, the Ash Heaps, and the Hollow Promises of Consumerism
The billboard's location over the ash heaps is crucial. In Chapter Twenty, Jordan describes Willets Point as a place where “New York goes when it is tired, when it is done.” The ash heaps are the residue of the city's excess, a dumping ground for its waste. The billboard, with its promise of clear vision, stands above this detritus, offering a false promise of clarity and insight. Yet the eyes are closed, and when Jordan forces them open, they only confirm the horror of the accident—a woman thrown from a car, her body broken. The billboard does not offer redemption or understanding; it merely reflects the violence that occurs beneath it.
This aligns with the novel's critique of wealth and class privilege. The eyes are an advertisement for an optician, a profession associated with correction and clarity, but they are also a commercial product, bought and sold like any other. The billboard's decay reveals another ad, suggesting that consumer culture is a series of interchangeable promises, each as empty as the last. Jordan's act of cutting the mouth is a form of vandalism, a rejection of the passive consumption that the billboard represents. By forcing it to speak, she exposes the lie that these eyes are watching over anything—they are just paper, and their gaze is as meaningless as the ash below.
Character and Theme Connections
Jordan Baker is the central figure in this symbol's evolution. Her paper magic—the ability to cut and animate paper—is a recurring motif in the novel. In Chapter Two, she cuts a paper lion that comes to life, and in Chapter Twenty-Three, she cuts open Nick's chest and replaces his heart with a paper one. The billboard is another instance of her creative and destructive power. By giving the billboard a mouth, she asserts her agency over a symbol that has traditionally been passive. This act also connects to her own identity as a constructed being; she is, as the novel reveals, a paper construct herself, a replacement for the original Nick Carraway. The billboard's paper nature mirrors her own, and her ability to manipulate it reflects her understanding of the fragility of identity.
The billboard also connects to the theme of memory and trauma. The eyes witness Myrtle's death, and their testimony is a fragment of that traumatic event. Jordan's encounter with the billboard occurs while she is drunk on demoniac, a substance that alters perception and memory. The billboard's speech is unreliable, and its vision is partial, much like Jordan's own memories of her past in Tonkin and her family's secrets. The symbol thus becomes a meditation on the limits of memory and the difficulty of recovering truth from the past.
The billboard's connection to displacement and belonging is also evident. The ash heaps are a liminal space, neither city nor country, where the outcasts and refuse of society gather. Jordan, as a Vietnamese-born woman adopted into a wealthy white family, is herself displaced. Her interaction with the billboard occurs in this in-between space, and her act of cutting it is a way of claiming a voice in a world that often renders her invisible. The billboard's eventual decay, revealing a circus ad, suggests that even the most imposing structures are temporary, and that new stories will replace old ones—a theme that resonates with Jordan's own journey toward self-definition.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does Jordan's act of cutting a mouth into the billboard change its symbolic meaning?
Jordan's act transforms the billboard from a passive, silent advertisement into an active witness that can speak. Initially, the eyes are closed, suggesting indifference or blindness. By cutting a mouth, Jordan forces the billboard to engage with the world, but the speech it produces is fragmented and limited. The billboard's testimony about Myrtle's death is partial, and it quickly closes its eyes and peels away, revealing another ad. This change underscores the novel's theme that truth is elusive and that even forced revelation is ephemeral.
2. What does the billboard's closed eyes signify in Chapter Nineteen, and how does that contrast with Jordan's later forcing them open?
In Chapter Nineteen, the closed eyes signify a refusal to see the suffering below—a kind of corporate or divine indifference. Jordan, however, treats the billboard as a potential oracle and forces it to open its eyes and speak. The contrast highlights Jordan's agency and her refusal to accept passive observation. Yet the eyes' eventual closing again suggests that even when forced to see, the truth is not lasting or complete.
3. How does the billboard's decay to reveal a circus advertisement relate to themes of consumerism and illusion?
The billboard's decay reveals that it is just one layer of commercial messaging. The circus advertisement beneath—featuring acrobats, freaks, and lion tamers—offers a different kind of spectacle, but it is equally hollow. This layering suggests that consumer culture is a series of interchangeable promises, each covering the last. The eyes, which promised vision, are replaced by a promise of entertainment, but neither offers genuine meaning. This reinforces the novel's critique of the corrosive power of wealth and the emptiness of material excess.
4. In what ways does Jordan's interaction with the billboard reflect her own identity as a paper construct?
Jordan uses paper magic to give the billboard a mouth, just as she herself is a constructed identity—a paper replacement for the original Nick Carraway. The billboard's paper nature mirrors her own, and her act of cutting is a form of self-creation. By forcing the billboard to speak, she asserts her ability to shape narratives, even as her own identity is fragile and contingent. The billboard's eventual decay also mirrors the impermanence of Jordan's constructed self, which she must continually remake as she moves toward a future in Shanghai and Vietnam.