In Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby, the reader watches an entire life go by through the eyes of a man named Nick Carraway. Fitzgerald unfolds the complex character of Jay Gatsby through the opinions, ideas, and bias of others, namely Nick. Throughout the novel Nick's opinion of Gatsby is constantly changing, at times Gatsby is all that is good, and at others he is reduced to a man worth nothing more than his long lost dreams. Fitzgerald uses literary elements and devices to create and expose Gatsby's character by Nick's first impression of him, first creating a fog of mystery about Gatsby, and as it clears Fitzgerald reveals the unhappiness and dissatisfaction of Gatsby’s life. In the first chapter of The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald creates the initial feelings of Nick toward Gatsby that will remain for the entirety of the novel. Gatsby was everything Nick disliked, or “scorned”, yet he also possessed a beauty and rarity that captivated Nick (6). Fitzgerald compares Gatsby to, “one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes”, creating an idea of machine like correctness and an earthquake like destructiveness (6). Gatsby is simultaneously everything …show more content…
This is the first major symbol of the book, and this moment(synonym?) will shape all those following it. The green light sits on a women named Daisy's dock, a woman Gatsby is in love with. However, Fitzgerald has withheld that information from the reader thus far, continuing with the theme of mystery. As time moves forward the reader can look back on the green light and know what it meant, for it was hope. It was all the hopes Gatsby had for the future, for he was convinced there was little beyond Daisy that he wanted. The light is Gatsby's dream, both his dreams of Daisy and the American Dream tied together in one symbol, a small green