ipl-logo

The Great Gatsby Time Analysis

410 Words2 Pages

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald manipulates time in the book as a force that cannot be changed. Throughout the novel, Gatsby’s life was formed around the idea of his past, but he can no longer live in the past. Fitzgerald explores the idea of Gatsby being trapped in the past. Gatsby spent his life longing for his dream of Daisy, which eventually became the reason of his death. The uses of time is portrayed in the awkward encounter at Nick’s house where Daisy and Gatsby met for tea. “His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock…the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers, and set it back in place. Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm of the sofa and his chin in his hand. ‘I’m sorry about the clock,’ he said…‘It’s an old clock,’ I told them idiotically. I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor.” (Fitzgerald 87). Gatsby leaning back on the clock is representative of him relying on the past to reunite Daisy and him. When the clock falls, Gatsby catches the clock, although it is already old and broken and can never be fixed, like Daisy and Gatsby’s …show more content…

“‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!’ He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. ‘I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,’ he said, nodding determinedly. ‘She’ll see.’ He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was…”

Show More
Related
1118 Words | 5 Pages

4.03 Developing Theme Thesis Statement F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and The Jelly Bean both use Irony, Foreshadowing, and symbolism to describe how many people’s endeavor to achieve great wealth and class drove people’s decisions in the 1920s. I. Main Idea for 1st Body Paragraph: Irony A. Literary element use and effect in novel 1. Nick’s relationship to Gatsby is an example of irony because Nick tells the story about Gatsby, but he doesn’t like him.

Read More
667 Words | 3 Pages

Gatsby, otherwise known as Jay Gatz, was an unusual man- dressed up in a pink suit and making his way to the top (seemingly) like it was nothing. We could talk about how unusual Gatsby’s tendencies and personality was for days, as it’s quite the controversial topic. But instead, we’ll touch upon Fitzgerald 's choices in The Great Gatsby that helped make Gatsby into the character he was. One of the major choices was Fitzgerald’s emphasis on aging and decaying, which helped show that while the world aged and changed, Jay Gatz didn’t.

Read More
805 Words | 4 Pages

The temptation of wealth and love drives him to chase unrealistic and misguided dreams: “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” (Fitzgerald 180). The more Gatsby tries to recapture his past, the further he is taken away from what is real. Throughout The Great Gatsby he moves further into this dreamland he has created of his perfect life with Daisy, trying to escape the social class he was born to that once separated them. There is also irony in that Gatsby continuously tries to distance himself from his past and the lower class lifestyle, yet he spends the entirety of his life trying to rewrite his past with Daisy until he sees that she isn’t someone truly worth his love.

Read More
826 Words | 4 Pages

The Great Gatsby is an American novel written by Scott Fitzgerald. On the surface, the book revolves around the concept of romance, the love between two individuals. However, the novel incorporates less of a romantic scope and rather focuses on the theme of the American Dream in the 1920s. Fitzgerald depicts the 1920’s as an era of decline in moral values. The strong desire for luxurious pleasure and money ultimately corrupts the American dream which was originally about individualism.

Read More
665 Words | 3 Pages

This symbolism of the clock shows Gatsby’s attempt to pick up where he left off with Daisy and set everything back into place the way it was before the time passed. The fact that Fitzgerald mentioned Gatsby’s “trembling fingers” showed Gatsby’s nervous excitement of the idea to rekindle his and Daisy’s past. It’s also important to note that the clock was already broken, “his head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock” (Fitzgerald 86). This is important because Fitzgerald is saying that the clock was broken before Gatsby had even gotten to Nick’s house and it would still be broken whether it did or did not fall to the ground. This symbolizes the idea that Daisy and Gatsby’s love was broken before they met up and Nick’s and even though, to them, it seems like they had “saved” their love, it was still broken.

Read More
1014 Words | 5 Pages

[Gatsby] cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”(110) As Gatsby truly believed that he was no longer James Gatz, he believed that Daisy still loved him and was the same from five years ago. But the truth of the matter is that Daisy had once truly loved him and she isn't the same as she was the years before, and there is nothing Gatsby can do to repeat the past and end up with the happy ending he dreamed of where “after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house—just as if it were five years ago.”

Read More
756 Words | 4 Pages

Gatsby’s dreams and aspirations in life are rather interesting and amazing as he goes about his life in the book. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald helps highlight the social, moral, and political issue that were very present during the 1920’s and today. Gatsby is the focus of the book as before the book began, he was an ex-soldier who came to wealth by some rather illegal ways. Daisy a married woman is his person of interest, who was his ex-lover 5 years before the book started. Gatsby’s actions, and words demonstrate a clear obsession with Daisy that seems to have no end.

Read More
317 Words | 2 Pages

In the book The Greats Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the clock on Nick’s mantle represents Gatsby’s attempt to recreate the past because there relationship is already broken and they won’t ever have the same relationship as they use to. Nick invited Daisy over to his home and told her to have tea with him. Nick and Gatsby planned to reconnect Gatsby with Daisy so he could show her his wealth. There conversation is awkward but broken

Read More
724 Words | 3 Pages

In the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the past comes up quite a bit for a few of the characters and Fitzgerald shows how the past affects each of the characters. Each character in the book has their own unique characteristics that create who they are. In this book it is explained what happened in Gatsby’s past and how he was able to become the successful person that he now. Throughout the book, Fitzgerald shows us how Gatsby keeps looking back at his past, especially when Daisy is involved she is everything to him and the biggest reason that he wants what he had in the past to come back.

Read More
839 Words | 4 Pages

In The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald, one of the characters is “stuck in the past”. Throughout the novel, Gatsby is constantly longing for a past relationship he had with a woman named Daisy, who moved on from Gatsby and married another man when Gatsby left for the war. Gatsby’s view of the past is used to develop a major theme of the novel: the moral decay of society. The novel begins with Nick, the narrator saying how the events that happened in New York, where the novel takes place, caused him to leave, and how he doesn’t like any of the people he was involved with.

Read More
2175 Words | 9 Pages

In Search of Human Morality Although the past is generally portrayed as a recollection of mistakes, regrets and unfond memories, it does not define one’s self identity. This plot is explained in vivid detail in both novels The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a coming of age novel of an uncommon bond between two unlikely friends who separate due to the increasing religious and political tension in Afghanistan 's years of corruption. After several years, Amir, the protagonist, receives a call and a familiar voice reminds his that there is a way to be good again. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald bases in Long Island, New York in the Nineteenth Twenties where

Read More
582 Words | 3 Pages

So everything he was doing was for Daisy, just to be with

Read More
1122 Words | 5 Pages

Daisy however, very heartbroken and anxious to start a family, failed to wait for Gatsby while he was at war and she vulnerably fell in love with Tom and his money. Throughout the time Gatsby was away she grew and developed mentally, leaving him to love someone that no longer existed. When Gatsby says “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!”(Fitzgerald 110)it shows how his imagination has affected his sense of reality. He became lost in the idea that he could get Daisy back and things would automatically return to how they were before he went away.

Read More
2095 Words | 9 Pages

"I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before, he said, nodding determinedly. She'll see" (Fitzgerald 110). Gatsby had an idea in his head about Daisy and would not let it go. His need to repeat the past, the perfect image he had of Daisy, and the unrelenting need of completing his task of gaining back Daisy is awful for him and the people around him. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Gatsby's obsession with the past is what ultimately led him to his death.

Read More
559 Words | 3 Pages

In the book The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, he uses a literary device called a flashback. He used the flashback to tell Mr. Jay Gatsby’s past story to the narrator Nick Carraway while they were at lunch. The flashback was not told by Mr. Gatsby himself but, by one of his and Nick’s friend Jordan Baker. The use of the flashback in the story provided answers to some of the questions in the book. Questions such as to why Mr. Gatsby throws elaborate parties and why he was suddenly interested in Mr. Nick Carraway.

Read More

More about The Great Gatsby Time Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document