The Distraction of a Rose in The Great Gatsby In the book “The Great Gatsby”, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a man named Nick Carraway narrates the story in Long Island, New York during the 1920s. Nick is described by many people as a rose and most of the symbols of the rose lead back to Nick. The symbol of a rose is used to describe beauty and love, along with pain and suffering. The rose has beauty in its petal and pain in its thorns. Fitzgerald portrays the theme of ignorance using the beautiful facade of a rose shielding people from pain, sadness, and the alcoholism that they are developing in the 1920s. The rose represents distraction and ignorance in the life of the elite. Nick has dinner at his cousin, Daisy Buchanan’s mansion in East Egg. …show more content…
When Nick first goes to one of Gatsby’s parties he asks the party goers what they know about Gatsby. Many people make up jobs for him or rumors about him because they do not know what Gatsby does for a living, nor who he is, “One time he killed a man who found out that he was nephew to Von Hindenburg and second cousin to the devil. Reach me a rose, honey, and pour me a last drop into that there crystal glass”(32). People use the facade of a rose to distract them from pain and suffering or what they do not know. The beginning of the quote is very heavy and depressing but once the word rose is used the tone becomes much lighter and happy. The theme of the rose moves back to Daisy. Before Daisy meet Tom, she was in love with Gatsby. Gatsby went off to war and Daisy believed she had to move on. Daisy meet Tom soon after, Tom was a wealthy young bachelor that could take care of Daisy. However Daisy was never happy with Tom, “At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor”(83). The day Daisy met Tom was very melancholy, the use of a rose here is sad and somber. This shows the ignorance Daisy has when involving