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Dr. TJ Eckleburg's Billboard Revisited

A look at the link between optometry and The Great Gatsby. 

By: Jennifer Kirby, managing editor
Optometric Management April 30, 2025

On the heels on the 100th anniversary of The Great Gatsby, American literature expert and Wellesley College English Professor Dr. William Cain revisited the novel with Optometric Management to explain the significance of the “Dr. TJ Eckleburg, Oculist” billboard in the lauded novel. 

As a brief reminder, The Great Gatsby is superficially about a man of little means who reinvents himself as a millionaire in a desperate ploy to rekindle a romance with a former flame.

"The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of "The Great Gatsby."
"The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of "The Great Gatsby."

“The billboard has been associated with moral decay, the death of the American dream, and God, but I think it serves as a reminder of the importance of sight in the novel as a whole,” explains Dr. Cain. “For example, the first-person narrator, Nick Carraway, watches and observes all the characters in the book and interprets them for the reader.”

Optometric Management’s Chief Optometric Editor, April Jasper, OD, FAAO, notes that this would make Carraway a great optometrist. “He makes diagnoses based on keen observation,” she explains. “We do this daily.” OM