Examples Of The Past In The Great Gatsby

Oh How The Times Change! With our lives quickly moving towards college, many high school students try to slow down the radical changes and deadlines that are so rapidly closing in on us. So much of the world around us is unknown and terrifying so we cling to the one constant that always remains the same. The past. We hold onto it and grasp at the fading memories of an easier and happier time in our lives where we had no cares in the world. What so many teenagers fail to realize is by living in the past, they miss out on the now. F. Scott Fitzgerald addresses this behavior and shows his audience just how dangerous living in the past can be. Although nearly everyone has most likely tried to hold onto the past at some point in their life, Jay Gatsby of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is an extreme example of this. After Nick stated how the past cannot be repeated, Gatsby literally cried out the fact that

He leaves no room for doubt on how time affects man when he writes, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (Fitzgerald 180). It’s undeniable at this point: time goes on and drags us with it, whether we are willing to move on or not. This symbolizes how Gatsby, though he may refuse to move on in his own mind, is helpless to stopping the merciless current of time. In one part of “The Language of Time in The Great Gatsby,” the authors tells the audience why Gatsby continuously (albeit fruitlessly) engages in a battle against time when they explain, “Gatsby… cannot convert the present into the past because time always frustrates the quest for the ideal; its function is an ultimate reminder of man’s human perimeters, his mortal destiny” (Magistrale & Dickerson 124). He fears his impending demise but Gatsby refuses to go down without a fight. Unfortunately for him, time is but a concept that has no sympathy for any beings, living or