The Great Gatsby Passage Analysis

In the last passage of The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the reader gains insight into Gatsby’s life through the reflections of Nick Carraway. These reflections provide a summary of Gatsby’s life and also parallel the main themes in the novel. Through Fitzgerald’s use of diction and descriptions, he criticizes the American dream for transformation of new world America from an untainted frontier to a corrupted industrialized society. In the novel, Fitzgerald never mentions the phase “American Dream,” however the idea is significant to the story. The American Dream is known to most as the pursuit of wealth and success through hard work. In the first paragraph of the passage, Fitzgerald describes his own idea of the American Dream. Sitting on the beach Nick thinks of the land “that flowered once for Dutch sailor’s eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world”(180) The use of the words “fresh” and “green” create the image of a bountiful land, a new frontier to be explored. This new world represents a land of opportunity and possibility for the settlers. Fitzgerald uses this positive description to show the basis of the American dream; where it originated and what it once meant. He portrays America as an old island

The novel concludes “So we beat on, boats against the current borne back ceaselessly into the past” (108). This means as we keep trying to move forward we are still restricted and defined by our past. Throughout the book Gatsby could not let go of the past and Fitzgerald related this to society. America was meant to be the new world filled with potential but this idea was soon ruined by old aristocratic values, like the Buchanans represent in the novel. To Fitzgerald, America is not full of possibilities, its frontier that failed to rise above its aristocratic European origins, just as Gatsby failed to escape from his