Theme Of The Green Light In The Great Gatsby

During the 1920’s, the American Dream wasn't all about peace, hope, and the pursuit of happiness. Around this time, it transitioned to being an all about money and seeing how far up in social class you could rise. Money was top priority around this time, and if you didn't have it, you hadn't completed the American Dream. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses the green light, Daisy, and Gatsby himself as symbols to convey his theme of the American Dream. Gatsby reaching out for the green light at the other side of the water, symbolizes the chase for the American Dream. Because he wants Daisy, Gatsby reaches for the Dream. Symbolically, it can be viewed as a figurative meaning, as he is reaching out for the life he wants. Arrogant and loving, Gatsby goes after the American Dream with the woman he wants and the life he wants. Shining bright through the air, the green light is the American Dream he is desperately grasping for. The life that he and all of society wants. Fitzgerald used “Gatsby’s [belief] in the green light,” to

Elegant and tragic, the Dream is different for varieties of people, but it always leads back to money and social rank. Striving for greatness, basically, it was the more money you had, the higher rank you achieved. Fitzgerald uses The Great Gatsby as a way to portray these traits of the people, because he hoped for a change of these morals so his conscience could be right. Scott Donaldson once wrote, this was the “first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James.” (Donaldson 1-2) The American Dream had drifted from the pursuit of happiness and Fitzgerald used this novel to recover the old to what it originally was. The only way to do that, was to shed light to the world through his special way of writing. The Great Gatsby both thematically and symbolically portrayed these discrepancies of the American