“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly” - Langston Hughes. In 1924, F. Scott Fitzgerald published a book entitled The Great Gatsby. The novel is narrated by Nick Carroway, and follows the story of Nick, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, and Jay Gatsby, an old lover of Daisy’s whose only goal is to once again be reunited with her, no matter the cost. The green light on the end of the Buchanan’s dock reappears several times throughout the novel. It symbolizes Gatsby’s dream of being reunited with Daisy, the money and material possessions he spent years collecting in hopes of being deemed worth in her eyes, and his motivation to keep fighting for her, even when it seemed as if she had forgotten about him. Ever since he first met and fell in love with her, Jay Gatsby was obsessed with Daisy. After he came back from the war and found out she had married a richer man, he spent nearly five years trying to work his way up to Daisy’s social status, hoping she would notice and remember him. He bought a house across the bay from her and her husband, Tom Buchanan, and would …show more content…
He focused his life around the hope that Daisy would come back to him as a result of all his years of hard work. Nick, reflecting after Gatsby’s death, observed, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (Fitzgerald, 184). Here, the green light represents Gatsby’s obsession with the past, and his refusal to live in the present and accept the fact that Daisy had someone else. Gatsby held fast to the belief that a life with Daisy was possible, even when it seemed that Daisy did not care for him at all. He was so wrapped up in his obsession with finding her and recreating their past relationship,that he forgot to think about the possibly of her refusing him .This is the danger of dreaming - becoming so absorbed with a certain ideal that one forgets to live in the real world and accept