Theme Of Green Light In The Great Gatsby

One of the most renowned American novels to date, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a classic tale of a man named Jay Gatsby who wishes to fulfill his dream of winning a woman. Set in the 1920’s, this novel uses various motifs to explore several themes. The most crucial of these motifs is the green light, which Fitzgerald uses to illuminate the downfall of the American Dream in the 1920’s.
Google defines the American Dream as, “the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.” In the 1920’s, most people associated this with money. Fitzgerald introduces the American dream in the exposition of the novel, when Nick, the narrator, provides background on his family history: “The actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on to-day” (3). Nick’s background and allusion to his relative implies that both he and his grandfather’s brother believe in the American Dream. It is clear that Nick’s relative moves to America in search of wealth and success because he moves to start a business. Nick, on

the other hand, explains that he himself had decided to move East to learn the bond business, demonstrating his own desire to follow the American Dream.
The greater significance the American Dream plays in The Great Gatsby, however, is associated with Jay Gatsby; although his American Dream is not so concrete.

Rather than explicitly stating Gatsby’s American Dream as he does with Nick, Fitzgerald depicts Gatsby’s American Dream as a metaphor: “He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way… Involuntarily I glanced seaward--and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock” (21). Fitzgerald makes it clear that the green light represents Gatsby’s love for Daisy, a woman whom Gatsby was in love with in his younger years, as the green light, which Gatsby gazes at curiously, lies at the end of Daisy’s

dock.
What the reader may at first overlook, however, is that Gatsby’s desire for Daisy is a representation in itself, symbolizing the common man’s American Dream. Like most Americans in the 1920’s, Gatsby centers his American Dream around money; except that his is in the form of a woman. Fitzgerald affiliates Daisy with money throughout the novel, such as, “her voice is full of money,” (120) and, “the largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fay’s house” (74). Furthermore, the fact that the color of the light is the same color as the dollar supports the claim that Gatsby’s aspiration for Daisy is representative of the common man’s American Dream and aspiration for money. Therefore, Gatsby’s desire for Daisy is, in a way, his own, personal American Dream.
Further support for the green light representing Gatsby’s dreams occur when Gatsby finally persuades Daisy to visit his mansion, and his dream starts to become true. When Gatsby again gazes upon the green light, but this time with Daisy present, he no longer feels its significance. “The colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock” (92). Fitzgerald uses a simile to contrast the “colossal significance” of the light before Gatsby and Daisy meet with the meaninglessness of it which Gatsby feels afterward, reinforcing the fact that the green light represents Gatsby’s desire for Daisy, as well as the American Dream as a whole.
Fitzgerald’s theory of the disintegration of the American Dream is present towards the end of the novel, when Gatsby undergoes a major misfortune of having taken blame for the killing of Myrtle Wilson. “(Gatsby) must have felt that he had… paid a high price for living too long with a single dream” (161). This “high price” does reference the accidental killing of Myrtle, but it also foreshadows what has yet to come: The murder of Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald ties this “high price” Gatsby pays with the “single dream” he has forever held of being with Daisy, implying that the former is a direct result of the latter. He is not wrong; if Gatsby had decided to give up on his dream, the events leading to his death are likely to have not happened. But because Gatsby had attempted to live with a single dream for years, one that had ceased to exist, his life ends in a tragedy, much like the American Dream did in the 1920’s.
The concept that Gatsby’s dream has crumbled years ago is reiterated on the very last page of the novel. “...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. He did not know that is 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). This time, Fitzgerald is explicitly stating that Gatsby is trying to live with a dream that “was already behind him,” but leaves it to the reader to realize that Gatsby’s failure and the death of his own dream parallels many Americans’ belief in the American Dream, as well as their failure to achieve it after it collapsed in the 1920s. He also uses personification in the phrase, “dark fields rolling on under the night” to emphasize the fact that Gatsby is attempting to live in a time period that has long been over.
So how should a 1920’s American react to the downfall of the American Dream? Fitzgerald has made it clear that one should not act as Jay Gatsby did, but to fully answer this question, Fitzgerald revisits Nick after his experience with Gatsby’s failure. In the beginning of the novel, Nick is excited to move East, where he can achieve his dreams and attain success. But by the end, Nick decides to move back West, for not only was he unsuccessful in his search for the American Dream, but his witness of Gatsby’s tragedy after his ambition for his dream has now made Nick realize that it’s not healthy to follow a ceased dream. “After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes’ power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.” The most crucial rhetorical technique within these lines is cause/effect, because this allows the reader to see how the events that Nick witnesses in the East changes him into a nonbeliever in the American Dream. Fitzgerald also uses imagery in this passage in order to cause the reader to feel what Nick is feeling.
At the end of the novel, Fitzgerald becomes more explicit in his message by emphasizing Gatsby’s desire to hold on to his ceased dream, which generates the death of Gatsby himself. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (180). Fitzgerald uses an appositive here to rename the green light as the “orgastic future,” reiterating the fact that the light represents Gatsby’s dream, as people see their dreams coming true in the future. It is not until years after these events, when Nick decides to tell his story, that he understands why these events end in a tragedy for Gatsby. Nick now realizes that, at the time of the events that he is writing of took place, the American Dream had already perished; Gatsby’s dream had receded him, and Nick himself had no better luck in the East.
There are many themes in The Great Gatsby, represented by numerous symbols and motifs throughout the novel. The most vital of these, however, is the green light, which Fitzgerald uses to highlight the downfall of the American Dream in the 1920’s. In order to accomplish this, Fitzgerald first gives significance to the light by representing it as Gatsby’s desire for Daisy, and then he represents that as a metaphor of the common man’s American Dream. Once the reader understands this, Fitzgerald is able to emphasize the downfall of the 1920’s American Dream through the tragedy of Jay Gatsby as he attempts to relive his dream.