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What Does The Green Light Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a book full of symbols and things that make the story of our protagonist, Jay Gatsby, very intriguing. The green light, in the novel, was one of the most crucial symbols that stands out and gives the book and it’s character an in-depth meaning. At a glance, the green light may not seem important but when the symbol is carefully studied it radiates a deeper meaning. The green light was just an ordinary light to everyone in the book, but to Gatsby, it represented a dream, his dream, which was Daisy. The green light represents the unreachable dream in the future that Gatsby is chasing endlessly, but never prevails.

Daisy is the dream Gatsby desires the most from the beginning of the book to the end. It is his final ingredient …show more content…

Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and faraway, that might have been the end of a dock.”(pg.21-22, Fitzgerald) This quote gives an insight on how Gatsby behaves with the light, the word “tremble,” used in the context clearly means that to him this light is massive but to the readers it proposes the idea that the light has a greater meaning for Gatsby. To him, it’s a beacon, a goal, his purpose in life that he is reaching out to. The dream of being with Daisy, his love. By the end of Chapter 6, when Gatsby tells Nick the story of how Gatsby fell in love with Daisy five years ago. “I wouldn’t ask too much of her,’ I ventured. ‘You can’t repeat the past.’ ‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he[Gatsby] cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!’ He[Gatsby] looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.”(pg.111,

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