Significance Of The Green Lantern In The Great Gatsby

The American Dream is something which almost every American is familiar with, but it also is unattainable for the vast majority of Americans, something which F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates with his acclaimed novel, The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby covers the story of Nick, an all around average man who is thrust into the lives of both the ultra wealthy and the aspiring-to-be wealthy when he moves to New York. He meets his nextdoor neighbor, Gatsby, who owns an extravagant mansion which Nick finds out to be purchased with money of questionable background, and owned by an ever increasingly strange and dubious man. Over the course of the novel, different characters all chase their own goals - some want love, some want power, almost everyone

It’s a story that goes to show that the American Dream is never attainable to the extent which one desires through, something which Fitzgerald does best through the use of the symbolization of the green lantern, the relationship between George and Myrtle, and the setting of the Valley of Ashes.
Firstly, the green lantern which Gatsby gazes at throughout the length of the novel shows how no matter how much you have, you can never have enough. At the beginning of the novel, Nick sees Gatsby for the first time, and observes him to have “stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away” (24). Gatsby gazes at the light from a private dock extending outwards from his extravagant mansion, so he’s already in an incredibly successful spot by the standards of most people. However, despite how much he has, he’s still able to distinguish a “single green light, minute and far away”. The miniscule size and far away distance of the

Near the end of the novel after Myrtle is hit and killed, George enters a state of depression: “Wilson’s glazed eyes turned out to the ashheaps, where small gray clouds took on fantastic shapes and scurried here and there in the faint dawn wind” (132). In this quote, George and the Valley of Ashes both show how the American Dream is prone to decay. The “glazed eyes” of George and ashheaps of the valley both show how over time, pursuit of the American Dream has corrupted both those who chased it, like George and Myrtle, and also corrupted the land itself, like the Valley of Ashes. Furthermore, the way that the clouds took on shapes intermittently in the bleak sky shows how it wasn’t always corrupted, and that it could have turned out better. They take on “fantastic shapes”, but are ultimately fleeting and inaccessible, much like the American Dream. Further evidence supporting this idea is seen earlier in the novel, when Nick observes Myrtle from the train whilst riding into town: “Then the valley of ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had a glimpse of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality as we went by” (65). The “panting vitality” of Myrtle goes to show how hard she works towards trying to reach the American Dream, toiling away in the Valley of Ashes. Ultimately, however, it doesn’t matter how hard she