Water In The Great Gatsby Essay

The Dark Side of the Egg
Tom and Daisy are part of a “rather distinguished secret society” in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Unlike the main character, Nick Carraway, and his neighbor, Jay Gatsby, who lives in West Egg, a place associated with new money, members of this high-class society are found in East Egg, a place for old money. In the novel, Fitzgerald uses bodies of water to highlight Gatsby’s goal to integrate into a higher social class. Fitzgerald uses this water motif to illustrate that in a world where a person’s wealth along with their past experiences defines their social status, a person who comes from a poor background may attempt to escape their past to change their social status. Although they may succeed at obtaining wealth, they cannot succeed in escaping their past and in order to move into the future, they need to accept their past.
Fitzgerald uses the Sound, a body of water between East Egg and West Egg, to illustrate Gatsby’s attempt to integrate into a higher social class. As Gatsby and Daisy look at “the green Sound,” Gatsby watches a “sail [crawling] slowly toward[s]” the Sound (124). Green connotes to

jealousy and money. Gatsby is jealous of the life that Tom and Daisy have together and is striving to cross the Sound in order to be recognized as old money. However, in order to achieve that, Gatsby needed to have been raised with wealth. Although he did not grow up with money, that does not stop his from wanting to succeed in his goal. Gatsby obtained an a abundance of money and believes he is “[crawling] slowly towards” to the Sound. However, the Sound is described as “stagnant in the heat.” “Heat” symbolizes getting close to an idea while “stagnant” is having no current or flow. Gatsby was able to achieve the first half of his dream, making him nearly accomplish his goal, but as the movement of the water becomes stagnant, the Sound becomes a barrier that stops his dream from achieving his goal because of his failure to escape his past. Fitzgerald uses the Sound as a barrier to illustrate that a person can never escape their past.
Transition the fuck out of this.

As Nick recalls Gatsby after his death, he says “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (189). “Ceaseless” means constant and unending. Susan Resneck Parr in the essay The Idea of Order at West Egg comments “Nick Carraway knows and as many of the others so painfully come to understand, ‘You can’t repeat the past’” (Parr 60). As Gatsby strived to go against what social class his past experiences put him in to by rewriting his past, he was always “borne back ceaselessly into the past” by the water’s current. Gatsby manage to get onto the water, the barrier in between him achieving his dream, but once he got on, the current’s natural pathway was towards Gatsby’s past. Fitzgerald uses this to convey that in order to get to the future, one must deal with your

past.