What Is The Significance Of The Green Light In The Great Gatsby

In this moment Fitzgerald explains that Gatsby believes he has accomplished his dream and has stabilized his relationship with Daisy. The significance of the green light has now been forgotten by Gatsby because his life can now be the way it was before he left for the war. In this stage of the novel, Fitzgerald takes time to express even further the impossible dream that Gatsby is chasing. While for an instant one might think that Fitzgerald allows Gatsby to achieve this superficial dream, he later shows that dreams in this era are not often accomplished (Cullen 182). Therefore, a moment does occur in which Gatsby notices the problems in the dream he is chasing. The problem does not have to do with the idea of pursuing Daisy, but has more …show more content…
With his “capacity for wonder,” (Fitzgerald 180) and his belief in the green light and “the orgastic future,” (Fitzgerald 180) Fitzgerald uses him to represent the hope and optimism of the people in the 1920’s. The manner in which Gatsby views Daisy causes him to create a vision for an impossible future based on feelings from the past. Even Nick speculates that the love was lost between them as he says, “Daisy tumbled short of his dreams - not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his allusion” (Fitzgerald 103). In Social Issues in Literature - Class Conflict in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Johnson describes how the Great Gatsby is solely a representation of the corrupt American dream as it exists in this period. He states,”The tawdry romance with Daisy, as we shall see, is the means Fitzgerald uses to show Gatsby the intolerable cheapness of his dream and illusion” (Johnson 26). Fitzgerald repeatedly shows this by making it seem as if there is hope for Gatsby. However, by the time Gatsby finally realizes the mistake he has made by forcing a relationship with Daisy, it is too late. Rather than acknowledging the fact that his dream has wasted the several previous years of his life, he decides to accept his fate. At this point in the novel, Gatsby has taken the blame for the …show more content…
Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is considered to be one of the most popular novels due to its careful examination of society and the issues it presents. Not only does the book spark conversation, but it also presents conflicting viewpoints and debatable topics. In relation to the American dream and the issue of wealth in this novel, readers are able to see the corrupt attitudes and superficial personalities of several different characters. In Robert Ornstein’s Scott Fitzgerald’s Fable of East and West, he describes how Fitzgerald has created the perfect character in order to criticize the American dream in this time period. Ornstein writes, “Gatsby is great because his dream, however naive, gaudy, and unattainable is one of the grand illusions of the race…” (Eble). Ornstein explains how Jay Gatsby is the perfect representation of a man with large dreams that are too big to attain, yet men like him in this era would pursue them no matter what. In addition, Marius Bewley’s essay “Scott Fitzgerald’s Criticism of America” supports the idea that Fitzgerald wrote a phenomenal criticism of society. Bewley recognizes the great achievement of writing such a novel and praises how Fitzgerald expressed his own beliefs about the American dream. He says, “[Gatsby’s] insecure grasp of social and human values, his lack of critical intelligence and self-knowledge, his blindness to the pitfalls that surround him in American society, his compulsive