ipl-logo

What Does The Boat Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

534 Words3 Pages

Similar to a boat going against the current, Gatsby is stuck in one spot, stuck in the past, being held back by an unavoidable force; he's unable to move forward no matter how hard he tries. Just like a boat: no matter how hard one rows, the boat will not move forward if its going against the current. In Chapter 9 of The Great Gatsby , F.Scott.Fitzgerald uses the imagery of boats and currents to represent the consequences of Gatsby's attempt to live in the past because the symbolism of a boat that can not move forward if it is fighting the current, represents that Gatsby is unable to let go of the past. In the end, Gatsby has been shot and killed. After a solemn, lonely funeral, Nick is wandering and ends up at Gatsby's dock, looking out on the restless sea. …show more content…

Gatsby was fighting the future, desperately holding on to the past, but if he had just let go and allowed himself to get pulled with the current and move on in the world like everyone else had, it would have saved him a lot of pain, but Gatsby's hopes were too big, his dreams to brilliant and he held on to tightly. One could argue that this is a human trait, a hopeless dream, that we refuse to let go of even if it's impossible. Perhaps we are all “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” (Fitzgerald 180). Fighting the current is near impossible, just like Gatsby's

Show More
Related

Examples Of Eulogy Of Jay Gatsby

912 Words | 4 Pages

Gatsby stood on the edge of his own party and by himself stayed there staring across the bay with a certain look of desperation and a yearn for something more. At this moment, I was not able to really see the reason why he was so curious about the green light at the end of the dock across the bay. I did not know him at this point in time. Despite that, after spending just a couple of weeks with him, it became obvious to me what he saw in that green light, a dream. Gatsby’s life was a collection of unfulfilled dreams that flew through his heart and the grand hallways of his house.

Read More

The Great Gatsby And The Open Boat Analysis

1299 Words | 6 Pages

The Great Gatsby, The Yellow Wallpaper, and The Open Boat share characteristics that are seen through common threads. These threads are social standing, helplessness, isolation, and the pursuit of something fake. Emotions such as love, loneliness, and boredom cause the characters to find salvation in something that doesn’t exist. In these stories their pursuit of a fake “salvation” causes them to lose control of their fate.

Read More

Examples Of Romanticism In The Great Gatsby

604 Words | 3 Pages

Gatsby has himself wedged between a rock and a hard place, and what I mean by that is he either gives up on his dream before actively pursuing it or he faces defeat after false hope leads him

Read More

Examples Of Leaving The Past Behind In The Great Gatsby

497 Words | 2 Pages

Leaving the past behind is oftentimes an extremely large burden. While wanting what we once had is a desire of many, it can be very detrimental to future plans. In the book The Great Gatsby, a man named Jay Gatsby meets his love Daisy Fay. They instantly fell in love. Gatsby however, knew that he had no money to support a marriage.

Read More

The Great Gatsby Rhetorical Analysis

914 Words | 4 Pages

Boats Against the Current In the final lines of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, there is a stylistic change in the writing, one that is meant not only to echo Jay Gatsby’s experience throughout the book, but also to meld those experiences into that of Fitzgerald’s readers. By doing so, readers are able to relate to and understand why Gatsby continued to chase after the unattainable, one of the most human undertakings that exist. Fitzgerald uses pronoun shifts, changes his general sentence structure, and includes different forms of punctuation to alter the conventional perspectives of The Great Gatsby and to divert readers’ attention to not only Gatsby’s endeavors but also to their own. Throughout the novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald eloquently describes the human desire to achieve something essentially unattainable.

Read More

The Great Gatsby Water Quotes

737 Words | 3 Pages

This quote can also resemble a sense of time that can be seen in a way of moving forward or being stuck. These themes build intensity throughout the course of The Great Gatsby. Gatsby thrives on the motion or flowing of water and needs it to be able to live his life and move forward, just how living things need blood flowing to thrive and survive. At 16 he ran away from home to find something more.

Read More

Desire In The Great Gatsby

1506 Words | 7 Pages

Desire in The Great Gatsby Desire can lead people in many different directions -- some good, and some bad. Desire can confuse people, and give them false hope. This makes them commit actions without thinking about consequences. Throughout the book, The Great Gatsby, desire influenced the choices of Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Myrtle.

Read More

Examples Of Moral Decay In The Great Gatsby

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

The Great Gatsby Strengths And Weaknesses

542 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, there are many characters in which each symbolizes their own life lesson and message. The book's main character Jay Gatsby, loves to simulate and relive the past. Gatsby is a nostalgic character who throughout the story has a moral ambiguity with his obsession with trying to prove that he can recreate past triumphs, believing that the past held everything that was great about his life, but it’s impossible to re-spark past emotions and memories. Nothing can be as it once was, people grow each day. Each new day a person has a new outlook on life, they have new feelings, emotions, and opinions.

Read More

Corruption Of The American Dream In The Great Gatsby Analysis

1756 Words | 8 Pages

This indicates that Gatsby was a man who believed in the “orgastic future” and a world that was superior to the one he found himself in. Furthermore, Gatsby 's attempt to pursue the American Dream is seen through his struggle to reach for the “green light” which symbolizes Gatsby 's dream of being with Daisy, This is demonstrated when: He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness (5).

Read More

The Great Gatsby And The American Dream Essay

525 Words | 3 Pages

Gatsby made a goal to reunite with the woman he loves and he worked for his dream. “Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.” Gatsby didn’t reach his dream right away, neither does anyone else. Trying harder to be better and perseverance is the way. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Read More

Obsession With The Past In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

What Does The Water Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

809 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout many brilliant works of literature, a common item is placed amongst them: symbols. Symbols are often a key to further understanding a point the author is trying to convey to their readers. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby, he utilizes the literary tool of symbols to illustrate a larger picture for his themes and characters within the novel. For example, the color green plays a prominent role in The Great Gatsby throughout the duration of the novel. However, the color has can have various interpretations.

Read More

Is The Great Gatsby Still Relevant To Today's American Society

819 Words | 4 Pages

We all like to believe that hard work and persistence pays off. The Great Gatsby is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald that includes many themes such as wealth, love, dissatisfaction, and most importantly, the American dream, and how it’s really only a dream. The characters, especially Gatsby, are trying to achieve this dream of a perfect life throughout the entire book. It becomes apparent that instead of reaching the success they desire from the hard work that they put in, they destroy their entire lives and relationships with one another in the process. Unfortunately, this story is not too far off from something that could happen today.

Read More

The Great Gatsby Passage Analysis

951 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More

More about What Does The Boat Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

Open Document