Alteration Of Perspective In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Time’s Inevitable Alteration of Perspective In the novel The Great Gatsby, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, representable characters such as Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick exemplify personal changes and a change in their realistic perspectives. The main character, Gatsby, is a prominent example of one’s perspective and characteristics being altered by time. In turn, his failure to accept the beauty of present time and to only want to relive the past negatively impacts his future planned actions. In regards to Daisy and Nick, and factually many others, understanding their true character and beliefs is entirely dependent on the factor of time and its indefinite length. As time passes, the representation of time, a main causality of positively and negatively

The clock, a prevalent and veritable icon of time, acts like a crutch to support Gatsby’s hopes of winning Daisy’s heart after losing it once. However, this defunct clock portrays the failure that Gatsby will unfortunately soon have to face. The indefinitely faulty timepiece, in a sense, portrays itself as a representation parallel to the love Gatsby wrongly assumes he will obtain in response to his consistent efforts and expression of his devout love to relive the past with her. Fitzgerald implies that Gatsby has a desire to reject reality. He believes that if his life is timeless, he will be able to get back with his lover once again. As they explore Gatsby’s house, Nick describes the third state of Gatsby’s mind: “Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock” (92). Fitzgerald uses a simile to illustrate Gatsby’s emotional state by comparing it to an overwound clock. An overwound clock runs too fast that it loses energy much faster than it will if it was wound correctly. Likewise,

In junction to the continuous passage of time, the true self, beauty, and respectable personas of the characters’ unravel. As such, one’s defiant attempts of true judgement and understanding of a character are, in a larger sense, now more prevalent. At the beginning of the novel when the readers are introduced to Daisy, she is described as “they were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house” (8). White is the color of femininity and innocence. The first glimpse that the readers get from Daisy is that she is supposedly pure and grew up innocently in a wealthy family. Daisy is encompassed with the imagery of white. As time passed, a white dress can eventually get dirty if it is not properly taken care of. White is such a pure color that it can easily get be mixed with other color. Similarly to the color white, her personality can also be shifted and get stained. Based on the events occurring in her life, like her husband cheating on her, Daisy gradually build up a characteristic that shows the lose in innocence.Towards the end of the book, Daisy develop a sense of carelessness, she shows that only her feelings is significant when she said, “Oh, you want too much! I love you now—isn't that enough? I can't help what's past. I did love him