What Does The Green Light Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

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In the novel, the most popular and most mentioned symbol is the green light. We stumble across the green light numerous amounts of times throughout the novel. In the book, it states, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (Fitzgerald P. 180). The green light, on a personal note, symbolizes Gatsby’s intangible goal. Gatsby always sees the light, always looking out amongst the dock and seeing the flickering green light, but he never comes into contact with it. Thus, relating it back to his goal that will never be pursued. He can dream and picture himself trying to track down his goal of Daisy, and of “The American Dream”, but, to a fault of his own, getting caught up in such miniscule, yet …show more content…

T.J. Eckleburg. In, the novel, it says, “God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God. Standing behind him. Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T.J.Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night” (Fitzgerald. P. 159) This symbol stands for the all knowing. More so, God looking over everything, seeing everything. To Myrtle and Tom and their promiscuous ways, to Daisy and Gatsby trying to rekindle their love, the eyes over see everything. Throughout the book, along with the movie, every time a character would be doing something that they knew was wrong, the eyes would be focused on. For example, in the movie, when Tom goes to town with Nick to meet up with Myrtle, the eyes were focused on. Thus, giving us a pretty good idea that the “Eyes of the All Knowing”, belonged to God, as he looked over all of the characters and watched as they slowly threw their lives away. This symbol would then be universal due to the eyes being the central insight of it all. It relates to the theme because it is shows that even if you think that you are not doing anything wrong, and that no one knows about the betrayal you’re doing to your loved ones, someone is always going to know what you’re doing. That you can attempt to keep it as personal as possible, but the truth always comes out

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