Gatsby

Gatsby

Green Light in the Great Gatsby

After the events of this story have unfolded, the narrator Nick, focuses on the man most like himself; Gatsby. Both Nick Carraway and Jay Gatz hail from the mid-west,

where morals and the right way of getting ahead are instilled into them. They travel to

New York, where the morals are paper-thin and everything seems turned upside down.

The saps with morals stay in the ashheaps while the careless, foolhardy upper society do

what they please. Nick stays true to the mid-west morals of an earnest, hardworking

living while Gatsby tries to be just like the others on East Egg. Nick says this of him,

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.

It eluded us then, but that’s no matter-tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further.....And one fine morning-”. A central theme of the novel I think, is the idea that people aren’t satisfied with what they have, they are always going further and further, never knowing when to stop, and always striving for that bright star that “seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.”

To Gatsby the green light symbolizes Daisy, Daisy in a way represents her peers in the same social strata as her. Daisy is a fool, living vicariously and so are the characters in this book. The green light represents the wild and recklessness of the times. These were times when women for the first time were drinking and smoking alongside the guys, their war was over and so were their troubles. The green light for them means go, after most wars the economy experiences a boom, this was no different. They are cocksure, thinking that whatever they do is right, and they always push on. They don’t care what happens to others as long as they remain untouched and unrivaled.

This selfishness is shown in nearly all characters except Nick, who accepts his life and is satisfied. He works hard and scrapes by, but he is living the life he wants, “I am one of the few honest men that I have ever known.”(64). He’s sensible and thinks out his actions. He doesn’t have the green gleam in his eye that everyone else seems to have. He is an observer to the situation, and when he talks of Gatsby believing in the Green Light, he sums up Gatsby’s philosophy and possibly what was written in the back of his most recent edition of “Hopalong Cassidy”; the way to live his life dedicated to Daisy.