Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby explores imagery, symbolism and setting to make the novel seem striking and memorable through the ups and downs of American society in the 1920s. This extract, taken from Chapter 9 reveals the failure of the American Dream through Gatsby’s dreams. Within this extract, Fitzgerald depicts the failure of the American Dream in the 1920s. This is seen through this novel of the Great Gatsby. One way Fitzgerald depicts the failure of the American Dream is through the use of symbolism. Fitzgerald uses the symbolism of the green light to reveal to the readers the impossibility of achieving the American Dream. For example, it states, “And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby 's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy 's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that 's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning---- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Now the light has totally ceased being an observable object. Nick is not in