A few symbolisms in novels are as memorable as the green light in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Shining at the end of Daisy’s dock, it is close enough to be seen, but too far away to be reached. Still, Gatsby, an eternal optimist, stares at it at night, as if it showed him that all his far-away dreams were about to come true. The green light in The Great Gatsby is symbolic of hope, a source of inspiration, and a representation of the American Dream to Gatsby and to the novel’s readers.Gatsby’s aspirations reflect the time period. The “Roaring Twenties”, as it is called, was a period of prosperity, and the Americans were obsessed with acquiring wealth, and thought that “those who have wealth should be splendid, happy people” (Gross 5). Gatsby embodies this mindset: born in a poor family he considered himself superior to that, and his quest for the American Dream led to his own destruction. Gatsby was so fixated with his dream, money and Daisy, that he decided to acquire it by any means that he could. His obsession with Daisy is in fact an expansion of his obsession with money. She represents Gatsby’s dreams: money, luxury, status (Rimmer).Someone might misguidedly believe that The Great Gatsby is a love story, that everything that Gatsby ever did was to conquer Daisy’s love, but the truth is that he desires her for her status, he wants her as the last piece of the puzzle to finally turn into Jay Gatsby, the high society Oxford man. “The tawdry romance with Daisy is the means Fitzgerald uses to show Gatsby the intolerable cheapness of his dream and illusion” (Bewley 26).In the novel, the first time that Nick sees Gatsby, he is reaching for “a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a do…
…ams, even if you have to die for it.
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Works Cited
Bewley, Marius. “Fitzgerald’s View of Class and the American Dream.” Class conflict in F. Scott Fitzgerald the Great Gatsby. Ed. Claudia Johnson. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2007. 23- 29.Print.
Danzer, Gerald, et al. “The Roaring Life of the 1920s.” The Americans. Eveston: Mcdougal Little, 2003.638-657. Print.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.
Gross, Dalton, and Maryjean Gross. Understanding The Great Gatsby. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998. Print.
Kazin, Alfred. “Gatsby and the Failure of the American Dream.” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby Bloom Notes. Ed. Harold Bloom. Broomal: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999. 30-31. Print.
Rimmer, Sara. “Gatsby’s Green Light Beckons a New Set of Strivers.” The New York Times. 17 Feb. 2008. Web. 2 May, 2014.
