Significance Of Summer In The Great Gatsby

Many writers use the season to help the reader interpret major characters and events in the novel. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, readers see almost a whole year from late spring to early winter in the life of Jay Gatsby. In many ways the seasons represent different parts of Gatsby’s life with spring being his life as a poor child in North Dakota to the highest point of his life in the summer and his demise in autumn and winter. Gatsby is very much like the character Trimalchio in Roman literature with his rise to fame and his fall from the elite of Rome or New York City. The circle of “life” begins in spring, then goes through summer, autumn, and ending in the cold of winter.

In spring everything grows, and the debris of winter is erased and replaced by new life. For Jay Gatsby the beginning of his life was very harsh growing up poor in North Dakota, which is not exposed until Chapter 6 of the novel. Nick states at the beginning of the novel “ In my more vulnerable years…” (Fitzgerald 1) in the spring everything is new and we want to try new things like learn...