The Seasons’ Change Thomas Foster writes, “Seasons can work magic on us, and writers can work magic with seasons.”(192) Many writers can and do use the seasons to do their work for them. The seasons can symbolize nearly anything; you just have to recognize it. This proves evident in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book “The Great Gatsby”. Throughout the book, Fitzgerald uses the seasons symbolically, corresponding to the happenings in Jay Gatsby’s life at the time in the story to describe more than just what is happening in the book. “On the last afternoon before he went abroad, he sat with Daisy in his arms for a long, silent time. It was a cold fall day with fire in the room and her cheeks flushed.”(Fitzgerald 150) Fitzgerald is sending symbols …show more content…
The fall symbolizes the downfall of Gatsby. Thomas Foster writes, “As we gather in our harvest, we find we have used up a certain measure of our energies, that in truth we’re not as young as we used to be.” (188) This quote is important because it can be applied to Gatsby’s life. When Gatsby was a younger man, he had a perfect, beautiful girl that had not matured and seen the world yet. All through the war and the five years of not seeing her, he still had the same flawless image of her going through his head, yet when they met, her “immense love” for Gatsby was not as great as he thought it would be. Gatsby thought that Daisy had never loved Tom, but he was proven wrong when Daisy said otherwise. “I did love him once--- but I loved you too.”(Fitzgerald 132) The fall symbolizes the love that has died between Gatsby and Daisy. The question asked by Thomas Foster, “Will autumn find us toting up our accomplishments or winding down, arriving at wisdom and peace or being shaken by those November winds?”(188) can be answered in many ways for this book, but only one for poor Gatsby. He would be shaken by “those November winds”, and they would proceed to take his life. Fitzgerald writes, “The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of transit, a thin red circle in the water.”(Fitzgerald 162) He includes the leaves so you know the season is fall, symbolizing the fall of Gatsby. The thin red