Significance Of The Green Light In The Great Gatsby

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During the time of the 1920’s, America projected an image of social decay and a lack of moral behavior. In the The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author utilizes universal themes that incorporate that same image into the character’s lives. The narrator, Nick Carraway, makes the decision to move from Minnesota to New York in 1922 in hopes of learning about the bond business. There, he rents a house in the fictional district of West Egg in real life Long Island. His neighbor, Jay Gatsby, throws extravagant parties every Saturday night in hopes of his true love coming back to him. Daisy, Nick’s cousin and Gatsby's love, lives in East Egg with her husband Tom Buchanan. However, Tom cheats on his wife with Myrtle Wilson and according to …show more content…

However, over the course of the novel, the meaning slowly changes and develops. At the beginning of the novel, the green light at the edge of Daisy’s East Egg dock stands for Gatsby’s hopes and dreams of reconciling his love with Daisy after five years. This positive association connects with the color green because the color green signifies the action of starting a new life. In terms of the dock light, Daisy represents a beacon that Gatsby continuously attempts to reach in the distance. In the middle of the novel, Gatsby’s delusional idea of rekindling his love with Daisy collapses. Gatsby realizes that his love for her can only take form in a questionable affair, which causes the green light to lose its symbolic meaning in the novel. However, the meaning of the green light shifts from Gatsby’s love to a universal meaning at the end of the novel. The green light now stands for the unreachable American dream the people have created. Nick sees life as a battle between past experiences, mistakes, and the sense of reality. In this sense, the green light represents the unrealistic dream to succeed and perform better each day. Each day the people attempt to grab onto this light, but it continues to move farther and farther away from the hands of greedy Americans. Whereas the color green first represented the idea of rebirth, it now represents the greed running throughout the nation. The reader first encounters the green light in chapter one where Nick watches Gatsby reach out “toward the dark water in a curious way” and explains that as “far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward--and distinguished nothing except a green light” (Fitzgerald 25-26). At the end of the novel, Nick no longer resides on Long Island, Gatsby has passed away, and Daisy has not been heard from. Nick thinks back to the green

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