Long Island In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a story that revolves around the upper class during the “Roaring Twenties,” but primarily, it is a piece of social commentary. The novel’s setting of the 1920s in the wealthy neighborhoods of Long Island does have some influence on the themes explored within it. For example, because most of the characters have so much money, consumerism is common and accessible to them. Through his utilization of symbolizing the green light, summer heat, and Daisy’s orchids, Fitzgerald develops the claim that temporary and superficial pleasures are only empty pursuits of satisfaction. Additionally, he comments on how the American dream can limit one’s happiness if they constantly want more. In his writing, Fitzgerald often

The narrator (and usual bystander) of the events that take place in the novel, Nick Carraway, first observes the green light when he sees his neighbor, Jay Gatsby, reaching for it: “he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way.Involuntarily, I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been at the end of a dock” (Fitzgerald 18). This dock belongs to no other than Daisy Buchanan, who is Gatsby’s former “lover” from years prior. In one context, this light represents the time that separates the two from each other. Gatsby constantly longs for Daisy at the beginning of the story because he has lost their love to time, and wants to reclaim it, which is why he is portrayed as stretching out for it. However, reaching it and turning back the clock is impossible, even though “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us,” and as stated by Nick in the closing lines of the novel: “We beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly back into the past” (Fitzgerald