What Does The Green Light Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is an American classic that many are fortunate enough to read. "The Great Gatsby" encompasses wild adventures and parties, love and lust, and ultimately, death. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald sprinkled in literary symbolism to tie the theme together and add to the novel. These symbols enrich the text and add to the clarification of the character's lives. Every page in this novel contains a new object, action, or event that symbolizes something new and unique about the characters and the story. The main symbol in "The Great Gatsby" is the green light. This light lives at the end of Daisy's dock, just across the waterway from Gatsby's house. The green light makes an introduction to Nick right after he had become acquainted with Gatsby. As Nick admires Gatsby after a party, he …show more content…

All Gatsby wants in life is to be with Daisy. He longs for her presence and lives his life to Daisy's standards and solely for reconnecting with her once again. Gatsby, in his own world inside of the novel, uses the green light to symbolize Daisy as well. At the start of the novel, the green light is distanced and unreachable by Gatsby, but as the novel progresses and as Gatsby and Daisy reconnect, the green light fades away and becomes an average object. The night when Daisy comes to Gatsby's house after tea at Nick's, Gatsby finally realizes the symbolism of the green light, and how it is no longer significant: "Possibly it had occurred to [Gatsby] that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever" (98; Ch. 5). The light, no longer represents the future, it represents the present. This mystifying light that once held open the door for an unknown adventure "was again a green light on a dock" and no more (98; Ch. 5). Gatsby's "count of enchanted objects had diminished by one", now that the light was insignificant (98; Ch.

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