Progression And Time In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby uses progression and time to reveal characters and their changes from how the narrator, Nick, views them in his own mind. The longer he stays in New York he becomes more and more disillusioned of Daisy, Tom, and even Gatsby eventually to the point where he simply sees the misery and sadness in each one’s lives. From Daisy’s lack of character and decisiveness to Tom’s issues of commitment and eventually to Gatsby’s belief that he has the ability to change the past. When Nick first arrives in New York he knows no one and nothing of the people and the city itself, he knows only of his cousin Daisy who married the rich Tom Buchanan and lived happily ever after, and that he lives as a small man surrounded by giants. However as

The day Gatsby and Tom argue at the Plaza Hotel, Nick suddenly realizes that it's his thirtieth birthday. He thinks of the new decade before him as a "portentous menacing road," and clearly sees in the struggle between old and new money the end of an era and the destruction of both types of wealth” (LitCharts). Nick focuses so much on the people around him that he forgets that he too is with them in the timeline and when focusing on himself he never thinks in the present, but rather the dread of a failed future in New

Over the years he took away from Daisy in order to gain a respectable, to him, amount of money to impress her enough to have her to himself Gatsby gained a distorted view of time that is symbolized throughout the novel not only through his iconic line of being able to change the past, but also in the sense when he first meets Daisy at Nick’s. He believes that Daisy is not coming two minutes before she was timed to arrive and then he messes with an old clock that symbolizes his loss of time with Daisy. “The clock symbolizes the passage of time, and Gatsby wants to turn back time because in the five years since he has seen Daisy, she has married Tom and had a child. If he could destroy the clock, he would be able to turn back time” (Enotes.com). Time itself is rarely mentioned like it is with Gatsby and Daisy. Another article writes, “The abstract idea of time in the story is very thought provoking. Gatsby’s life up until this point had been consumed by Daisy. His time was dedicated to thinking of her, and this idea is reflected by the lack of time in the book. Time of day is rarely mentioned nor is the day of the week or even the month because of its unimportance. Seasons are the only concrete use of time. The season of summer seems to represent Gatsby’s dreams with Daisy. Summer is when he met her and it is the time that he has met her again”