Gastby Essay

Submitted By owenelizabeth
Words: 1344
Pages: 6
Open Document
The Belief That Green Will Get You There

Green means go. To move or proceed forward and to progress. Throughout life, when someone hits a bump in the road generally the best thing to do is move forward and to get over it. However, unlike ordinary life, the meaning of green is interpreted differently in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book The Great Gatsby. Here, the color green is evident throughout the entire novel. With the use of enchanting and mystifying language green is intertwined into Gatsby’s life and embodies his objective to win Daisy over. It is represented in many instances, however the most significant being the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. This light symbolizes all of Gatsby’s hopes and dreams. It represents everything that haunts and entices him whether it is the gap between the past and the present with the promises of the future, his relationship with Daisy, or the powerful lure of the wafer-thin leafy colored paper we call money. Throughout Gatsby’s life he has always aspired a goal, whether that would be in the past, the present, or for the future. For the duration of the novel Gatsby aims to recover the past so he can enhance the present to make the future what he desires all this time. He believes that he can accomplish this as he says to Nick, “Can’t repeat the past?...Why of course you can!” (Fitzgerald 110). Here Gatsby clearly thinks that the present can mirror the past, however in reality not one moment can ever be repeated in exact detail. Moreover, is his “past” is his idea of Daisy what he really thinks it was or just some idea in his head? Nick begins to pick up on this and after there discussion on page 110, further down he relates, “He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.” (110). It becomes more obvious what he dreams to have, but then after the thought Nick continues, “His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.” (110). Here, it becomes less obvious what Gatsby has in mind, however the reader still knows that is it and always will be Daisy and the “single green light, minute and far away, at the end of a dock” (21). Into the present, once Gatsby and Nick become more than acquaintances, Daisy shows up more frequently. After their first meeting Nick looks back at Gatsby and sees, “that the expression of bewilderment has come back into Gatsby’s face…to the quality of his present happiness” (95). Due to his increased happiness at the sight of Daisy, Gatsby finds more hope in seeking her final approval. He continues to “believe in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (180), however “glorious might be his future as Jay Gatsby, he was at present a penniless young man without a past” (149). This objective that Gatsby has reflects over the entire novel with the use of the “green light” that continues to motivate him, after all it is all he has. Fitzgerald describes him as a “penniless young man” despite his rich fortune; emotionally he fails to develop which is why he is a man “without a past”. This is strikingly significant to the novel because though Gatsby has the money, he has nothing else, which has quite literally cost him in the game of life. Furthermore, leaving him only dreams and the “green light” to guide him. As the “green light” continues to motivate Gatsby, it is not the only thing green in his life. The Sound, which is the lake, is also green and Nick describes it to be “a fresh, green breast of the new world,” where the “greatest of all human dreams,” lay and in its presence it “compelled an aesthetic contemplation he (Gatsby) neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder” (180). As powerful as this quote is, it also
Show More

Related Documents: Gastby Essay

Essay on The Great Gastby

appears to be kind-hearted towards women, he expresses his love towards Desdemona fervently both in private and in public. By examining Iago’s habit of insulting females, treating women like sex symbols, and Othello’s view towards Desdemona, this essay will demonstrate that Shakespeare’s “Othello” is a misogynist text. For many years, women were being treated unequally. Women who were disobedient to their husband were beaten or insulted. Eventually, this became a habit for women and they were…

Words 734 - Pages 3

Essay on The Great Gastby

“A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love” (Max Muller). In F.Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby has been in love with Daisy Buchanan for five years. However, the war makes him go fight, leaving Daisy behind. When he is leaving to war, he promises to himself that he will come back to Daisy as an opulent man and win her heart. With Gatsby at war, Daisy decided to move on and marry Tom Buchanan breaking Gatsby’s heart. As promised, Gatsby return…

Words 924 - Pages 4

gastby notes Essay

Firzgerald believes that the American Dream has been twisted and corrupted into an uncontrolled desire for pleasure and money which is still correct about today's obsession with materialistic objects. F. Scott Fitzgerald's perspective is from the 1920's he believes that the American Dream itself is dying. Just as the significance of the green light across the bay dies throughout the novel for Gatsby. Gatsby's American Dream is to have Daisy. Fitzgerald also alludes to the American Dream being corrupted…

Words 1231 - Pages 5

Great gastby Essay

The great gatsby is an amazing book. I would recommend to anybody. The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism…

Words 327 - Pages 2

The Great Gastby Essay example

A Tragic Fall A Ford car that Americans still drive today used to cost just $290 in the 1920s! Well, this car ties in with one of the mistakes made by Jay Gatsby. The novel The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This novel shows how a young man named Jay Gatsby attempts to reach his American dream but, his actions cause him to come to a tragic fall. Jay Gatsby is a tragic hero because he has a number of flaws that come back to defeat him; His affection for Daisy, His desperation…

Words 872 - Pages 4

Essay about Pursuit in the great gastby

Pursuit in the Great Gatsby In the novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, with his narrator, Nick Carraway, he deepens the theme of pursuit by dividing society among “the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired” (79). This is a recurring theme throughout the novel and by looking at which category each character falls in to, the reader can understand this piece of literature better. Nick Carraway, thinks he is pursuing a fortune in the stock market in the east. Throughout the book…

Words 481 - Pages 2

Great Gastby Ten Moments Essay

1.When Nick and Daisy have their first real conversation as cousins. “We don’t know each other very well, Nick”…”Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding”(16). “It made me uneasy. As though the whole evening had been a trick or some sort to exact a contributary emotion from me… in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged”(17). The first chapter introduces…

Words 1630 - Pages 7