What Does Spring Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

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In the novel, The Great Gatsby, the changing seasons mirror the rise and fall of hopes and dreams; it's a tragic tale of inevitable disillusionment. The changing seasons hold a lot of symbolic meaning across different cultures and beliefs. Symbolism in the seasons has been persistent throughout literary history, making symbolic connections to paint a bigger picture. Generally, the four seasons —Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter— are often associated with aspects of life and nature. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald implements the symbolism of seasons to highlight each character's desires, mirages, and the deterioration of the American dream; Using the freshness of the spring, the sultry of the summer, and decomposition of fall to represent …show more content…

At the end of the novel, Gatsby realizes that he has been chasing something that is unattainable, that he and Daisy cannot rekindle the relationship that they had years ago. After Daisy and Tom Beuchanon left the city, he had to face the truth of their relationship. She couldn’t leave Tom and resume with Gatsby like nothing ever happened. As Gatsby faces this dark truth, the fall season is taking on and this has the underlying feeling of romantic decay and decline. “Autumn represents the stages of life that include development, maturation, loss, decay, and change. Winter is a metaphor for all these things: death, loss, misery, and adversity. The shifting of the seasons could serve as a metaphor for subtle and profound ideas.” This shows how the fall season can be portrayed as a time for downfall, loss and change. The changing of seasons can represent the changes in a character's life, their state of emotions, and their losses. The fall season has a big impact on the characters in The Great Gatsby. In literature, fall represents a decline and can be conveyed that the characters are experiencing loss and