One question that continued to run through my mind as I was reading The Great Gatsby was “does the green light symbolize Gatsby himself?”. The green light sits at the end of Daisy dock in the East Egg. It is barely visible to Gatsby, who lives in the West Egg, but every now and then the light peaks through the heavy nighttime fog. The light is a constant reminder of how close Daisy is but also how truly far away his dreams for a life with her are.
Gatsby is like a phantom. He stays hidden to those around him. He throws these elaborate parties in the hopes that perhaps one day Daisy will come. Regardless, no one knows who Gatsby is and what his intentions are. Even when he lets those who are close to him know who he is, we question how reliable he is, and if we can trust what he claims to be his past. Gatsby is stuck in the past, he lives every day trying to fulfill the dreams and ambitions that he did not get to achieve. Aka, not only loving Daisy but also giving her a lifestyle that she will deem as worthy.
Another question I had was, if the green light is not a representation or symbol of Gatsby himself can it represent his past and how he can’t seem to get out of it? As I was brain storming I tried to separate the two. One being, the green light is Gatsby as a whole, or two, the green light merely represents how Gatsby’s past is always there, taunting him and reminding him of how Daisy can never be his. Both seem to be plausible but when I think back to class discussions we talked about how Gatsby is his past. His life is one endless cycle of trying to obtain the unobtainable. We see this at the end of the book when *spoiler* Gatsby is killed. He is Daisy-less once again and becomes an actual phantom as his legacy begins to fade. Even through all of that the green light still shines through the fog.
“Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one” (100). The light is Gatsby as a whole. His past, present, future, aspirations, love for Daisy and etc. At some point Gatsby realizes that the light doesn’t hold as much power as he thought. It is just a light and the life he built for Daisy and him was only ideal. I believe Gatsby feels powerless and even hopeless once he realizes that the “ideal life” he planned for Daisy wasn’t enough to keep her. Daisy was his only hope for the future or at least one he would consider to be fulfilling. Without Daisy, Gatsby’s light dims. The green light is only a reminder to those that knew him of the unfulfilled aspirations that are the great Gatsby.
Boba Gal Books 