How Does Fitzgerald Use Weather In The Great Gatsby

As readers, we encounter many different books with many different storylines, but do we always grasp the allegories, or symbols, that the author uses throughout his text? Granted, some are more obvious than others, but we all can agree that just about every single book we’ve picked up, or will pick up in the future, will have some sort of symbol. In The Great Gatsby, there are a few symbols that F. Scott Fitzgerald uses to underline the main ideas throughout his text, but one in particular stuck out to me, the weather. Not only does Fitzgerald use the rain and the sunshine, but he also uses the seasons, summer and fall, to give his scenes deeper meanings. The weather provides meaning by representing Gatsby’s feelings, the heat between the characters,

During this particular example, Daisy and Gatsby reunite for the first time in five years. As the scene unfolds, we notice there is a significant change in the weather that’s interchangeable with Gatsby’s mood and his overall feelings. When Gatsby has his first interactions with Daisy, he’s understandably nervous, embarrassed, and a bit sad that it’s been so long since he’s seen the woman he loves. While he’s feeling these strong and steady emotions, the rain is also coming down strong and steadily, enough to cause large puddles in Nick’s

Fitzgerald uses the season change from summer to fall to coincide with Gatsby’s life. We learn at a young age that spring is a sign of new life. Whether it’s the blossoms on the trees, or the new animals being born, there’s an overabundance of new life. We then learn that summer-time is when most plant-life are at the peak of their life; they’re full of life. Lastly, we learn that come autumn, most plant-life start to die off because they can’t handle the cold, brisk temperatures that are coming. Just as these lives die in the fall, so did Gatsby’s. Though as readers, we see deeper into Gatsby’s death. Not only did Gatsby literally die, but it’s almost as his single goal, his only dream, died too. “I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream,” (pg. 169). We may feel a bit frustrated, or agitated, that Fitzgerald would end ‘The Great Gatsby’ like he did, but we have to give him the credit. Fitzgerald did an absolutely flawless job at summarizing how real life ends more often than not; messy and quite