Nick's Vision In The Great Gatsby Essay

Title
The final passage of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald speaks to Nick’s disappointment over loss of a kind of romantic vision which he believed. Gatsby embodies that vision, which Nick described as his “romantic readiness”, and that Gatsby’s death, and subsequently the failure of Nick’s belief in that romantic vision, is what causes Nick to desire a world at “moral attention” at the beginning of the novel (2). The fading of Nick’s romantic vision is brought on by both the death of Gatsby and Myrtle, and Daisy’s refusal of Gatsby’s love. Nick sees people not taking responsibility for their actions, as Daisy does, and where people don’t fulfill their dreams for love in a moral manner, shown through Tom’s affair with Myrtle. Nick’s

romantic vision for the world is one where people are able to pursue and achieve their dreams, including those of love or a kind of fulfillment, but doing so in a way that is morally correct and not being corrupted into doing things that are not a part of that dream. In the context of the closing paragraph of the novel, Nick is contending with the prospect and the idea of the romantic dream and his increasing sense of doubt in the possibility of that dream. This passage also reflects how the events of the novel have changed Nick’s view of humanity as a corrupting force. The passage reflects Nick’s struggle of Nick’s loss of this romantic vision. It begins with a sense of emptiness, followed by a sense of hope mingled with a feeling of hopelessness, and then finally, his darkest conclusion that his dreams are truly unobtainable.
The closing passage of the novel opens with Nick feeling the desolation and emptiness in the wake of Gatsby’s death. The scene begins with Nick describing how “Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound” (180). The result of Gatsby’s death has placed Nick in a state of feeling alone and empty inside, which is reflected by the utter desolation he describes overlooking the Long Island Sound. This is the first subtle sign of Nick’s own internal desolation and emptiness of hope that his deeply romantic vision is simply not possible. This makes sense given Gatsby’s capacity for hope, or “romantic readiness”, as Fitzgerald puts it.
Despite the desolation that Nick is feeling, he is not quite capable of letting go of the idea of “romantic readiness” that Gatsby embodied; however, his hope for a world capable of sustaining this romantic vision is riddled with doubt. Nick goes on to envision how, “as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world” (180). It is clear that Nick has not entirely lost the hope for “romantic readiness” because he imagines a world where it is possible. From the term, “fresh, green breast of the new world” it can be inferred that Nick is trying to return to a time of purity, when hope was still possible. However, Nick does this by the removing the influence of people, shown through the emptiness in the previous quotation as well as the how the “houses began to melt away”. Nick also seems to be saying that nature is inherently pure, or “green”, and that humans are the corruptors of his romantic vision, and therefore need to be removed. It is somewhat ironic though that his idealized world is lacking people because part of his hope is for a world where people have integrity. Therefore, if his hope for a world that stands “at moral attention” lacks people, then he should have no reason to believe that people will have any more integrity when he moves back to the Midwest.
As Nick’s romantic vision takes form, a certain bitterness arises, suggesting Nick’s doubt in his dream.

Nick imagines, ““Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder” (180). The trope of human corruption of nature is once again explored through the idea of “the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house”, as if nature itself is being corrupted through the process of being turned first into lumber and then into Gatsby’s house. However, the fact that the trees are the ones that had, “once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams” is far more important. It is clear that Nick imagines that the trees, and therefore nature and the purity of this virgin world, as the ones that inspired people to have profound dreams. However, because the trees are pandering, Nick implies that these pandered dreams are false. This creates an interesting dynamic because no does Nick imagine the “fresh, green breast” of this pure, unpeopled world, does he come to see the pandering trees as a corrupting force because they inspire dreams that can never be attained. “Enchanted” is an interesting choice to describe

the effects the trees because while it is not quite negative, it still implies that the men are held under some kind of spell or charm. It is interesting that Nick imagines that this “aesthetic contemplation” is something these men “neither understood nor desired”. The word “aesthetic”, in this situation, can be read as somewhat vapid, or lacking any substance to it, because it has the connotation of being associated with appearances. Also, part of the reason that Nick believes that this dream cannot be sustained is because man “neither understands nor desires” it. The reason why Nick believes that this was the last time man was “face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder” because they are filled with wonder by the purity due to the absence of people, but also because humans can dream of this romantic vision, yet they cannot actually apprehend what it is, nor do they actually want to achieve it.
In the penultimate paragraph of the novel, Nick continues to reside in his own fantasies, but turns his focus towards Gatsby and includes something far more cynical about the romantic possibilities that are lost both unto Nick as well as the whole country.

Nick notes how he, “thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it” (180). Nick is equating the wonder of the Dutch looking out upon the pure, unpeople world of the past to Gatsby’s wonder at the time of the novel. This is important because it shows that Nick still recognizes people’s ability to have these dreams. Typically, Daisy and the green light are associated with the green of money, but upon further inspection, it seems much more plausible that the green light is an allusion to the “green” purity of nature described in the previous paragraph. Therefore, it is the green of the past brought forward and associated with Daisy in the present by Gatsby. The lawn is blue so as to differentiate it from the green of nature that is unsullied by human corruption; lawns are manicured and sculpted by humans, so they cannot possess the same innate purity of the “fresh, green breast”. Additionally, by standing on the blue lawn, Gatsby is living in a world that is corrupt, yet he can still see the purity of the green light. However, just like the Dutch could not

understand nor desire the wonder invoked by the beauty of nature, Gatsby can see the green light, but he does not truly understand what it is nor why he wants it. Thus, Nick notes how even Gatsby, “did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night” (180). Much like the pandering trees, the dream that Daisy promises is ultimately unobtainable, so the green light itself cannot be pure. Also, Nick is going back to the Midwest, but by saying “the dark fields of the republic”, it is implied that Nick is not actually going to find his idealized pure world, but rather only more corruption and an overall lack of integrity. The word “republic” evokes the idea of the United States as a whole, and seen to suggest that the United States is incapable of sustaining or pursuing this romantic vision. Nick goes on to dote upon Gatsby and how he “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 farther.... And one fine morning—“ (180). Nick sees this future as “orgastic” for Gatsby because it is filled with a full sense of both sexual and romantic desire. The most striking thing about this excerpt is how he describes the future as “receding before us” and the subsequent shift from third person singular to first person plural. Recall that this passage opens with a ferryboat literally receding away from Nick, so now that same ferryboat can be seems as a symbol of dreams and how they continually get further and further away. Nick uses the third person plural because he wants to indict the entire world, including himself reflected in the bitterness of the phrase, “it eluded us then, but that’s no matter”. “Then” implies that it may be possible in the future, but, in Nick’s eyes, humans continue to ignore what they have learned and hold onto their capacity for wonder, which they are constantly being pandered to. The novel closes with, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (180). The word “beat” implies a struggle, but the constant “current” of human corruption means that no matter how hard no one struggles, it is impossible for them to ever achieve that goal. Nick bases this new, cynical worldview upon both what he witnesses over the course of the summer as well as his fantasized history. For Nick, this is the “current” of human history in both the immediate past and the far past that keeps us from truly achieving their goals.
The final words of the novel illustrate Nick’s internal struggle of keeping faith in both the dreams of human beings and the morality of humans. However, as the passage progresses, his language becomes increasingly cynical, separated by momentary flashes of belief in his romantic vision, until he ultimately accepts that not only humans, but the world and nature itself are a corrupting force upon the “romantic readiness” of humanity.