Paradox And Symbolism In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Throughout his life, F. Scott Fitzgerald, a prestigious writer of the Jazz age, experienced many battles during his unsatisfactory life. Many of his disturbed endeavors lead to his creation of many marvelous novels including his exquisite novel The Great Gatsby. From beginning to end, Fitzgerald’s notable use of paradox and metaphorical language creates phenomenal and modernistic symbols. Whether distinguishing relationships between characters and morality, Fitzgerald continuously uses symbols to express the adequate meaning of what is behind the true theme of The Great Gatsby-the power of hope cannot determine a dream. The Great Gatsby’s most vital symbol to affirm the theme is the unceasing green light. The “single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock” is actually an …show more content…

By acknowledging Gatsby’s fixation for his future with Daisy, Nick conjoins Gatsby’s boundless desperation with the novel’s theme that the power of hope cannot determine a dream, or in this case, Gatsby’s dream. Because he is so consumed with his delusion, Gatsby does not realize that his dream is unreachable whereas no amount or power of hope can create his perfected fantasy of the future. In continuation to the green light’s relationship with the theme, not only does the green light illustrate Gatsby’s desperation for the dream but the light furthermore acts as a symbol of Gatsby’s hope for the future. Gatsby’s longing for the light affirms and “embodies the profound naïveté of Gatsby’s sense of the future” as he pursues this unattainable relationship

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