Analysis Of The Green Light In The Great Gatsby

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning—” The Green Light in The Great Gatsby situates at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsby’s West Egg lawn. The author Fitzgerald compares the green light to how America, rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the new nation. The green light represents Gatsby’s incorruptible dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Gatsby’s longing for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream,

When the narrator Nick first met his neighbor Gatsby, he wrote down “he[Gatsby] stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward--and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock”(Fitzgerald 22). The green light is very mysterious at first. Nick seem not to be quite sure why Gatsby is watching on that. The light is described as dimly discernible and comes from faraway places. This mystery underscores the fact that the green light is a symbol which also reveals American’s longing for their American dream. Although the American dream seems quite untouchable, people still eager for it. When Gatsby finally meet Daisy again, "If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay," said he. "You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.”(Fitzgerald 121) In this time, Gatsby met Daisy that he admires day and night. The meaning of the green light presents now is totally different from the meaning of “a single green light” that “might have been the end of a dock”. Instead of the “enchanted” that we saw at the begging of the story, now the light has had its “colossal significance.” This is because Gatsby is now actually standing there and

Gatsby with the disappointment of dream, the symbolic meaning behind the green light collapses. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning----So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”(Fitzgerald 159) Now the light has totally ceased being an observable object with no more meaning and illusion. Nick is not in Long Island any more, Gatsby is dead, Daisy is gone for wealth and luxury life with her husband Tom. The only way the green light exists is in Nick’s memories and philosophical observations. This means that the light is now just a symbol of the vanish of American Dream and nothing else. Fitzgerald quoted from Youth and show how well Fitzgerald had mastered Conrad’s art of magic suggestiveness “Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.” During the novel, Gatsby’s dream is revealed to be the delusional conviction that he could ignore five years of events and Daisy’s own personality and inner life to get what he wants. With this disappointment, the symbolic meaning behind the green light