What Does The Green Light Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

In the novel, the most popular and most mentioned symbol is the green light. We stumble across the green light numerous amounts of times throughout the novel. In the book, it states, “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us” (Fitzgerald P. 180). The green light, on a personal note, symbolizes Gatsby’s intangible goal. Gatsby always sees the light, always looking out amongst the dock and seeing the flickering green light, but he never comes into contact with it. Thus, relating it back to his goal that will never be pursued. He can dream and picture himself trying to track down his goal of Daisy, and of “The American Dream”, but, to a fault of his own, getting caught up in such miniscule, yet

so damaging conditions, he will never be able to pursue his lifelong goals. The green light would then be a conventional symbol, due to the fact that it is so important, and specific to the novel. This symbol relates to the theme of ‘The American Dream’ because he wishes to reach that goal, but never does.
The next symbol is the eyes of Dr.

T.J. Eckleburg. In, the novel, it says, “God knows what you’ve been doing, everything you’ve been doing. You may fool me, but you can’t fool God. Standing behind him. Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T.J.Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night” (Fitzgerald. P. 159) This symbol stands for the all knowing. More so, God looking over everything, seeing everything. To Myrtle and Tom and their promiscuous ways, to Daisy and Gatsby trying to rekindle their love, the eyes over see everything. Throughout the book, along with the movie, every time a character would be doing something that they knew was wrong, the eyes would be focused on. For example, in the movie, when Tom goes to town with Nick to meet up with Myrtle, the eyes were focused on. Thus, giving us a pretty good idea that the “Eyes of the All Knowing”, belonged to God, as he looked over all of the characters and watched as they slowly threw their lives away. This symbol would then be universal due to the eyes being the central insight of it all. It relates to the theme because it is shows that even if you think that you are not doing anything wrong, and that no one knows about the betrayal you’re doing to your loved ones, someone is always going to know what you’re doing. That you can attempt to keep it as personal as possible, but the truth always comes out

eventually.
The third, final, and most important symbol is Mr. Jay Gatsby’s infamous parties. Anyone and everyone knows about Gatsby’s parties. The glitz, the booze, and the constant roar of music all relate to his raging gatherings. In the book, it states, “Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party
with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission” (Fitzgerald, P. 41). This sentence tells us that even though very, very, very seldom people knew Gatsby personally, they still came as if they were the closest of friends. That people came and went to Gatsby’s parties, without even knowing him. This tells us just how popular these parties are. Now, of course Gatsby wouldn’t just throw these parties for the anonymous people who came through his house every time he threw one. He had to of had a specific reason for these, which, of course, related to his love for Daisy Buchanan. The novel states, “I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties, some night” (Fitzgerald, P. 79). This is telling us that he only really threw those parties hoping that Daisy would wander in on one of them. Due to her living just across the bay from him, he hoped she would she would take notice, and seemingly take interest in speculating at least one of his parties. This symbol would then have to be conventional, because it was just set for that specific time period. This ties back to the theme by showing us just how far Gatsby went to get Daisy’s attention.
These symbols show us how far Gatsby went to achieve his goal. Although his life was cut short, he kept going. Too many people get caught up in this goal of The American Dream. All of these characters reached their downfall, which shows us how easy it is to lose sight of things that mean to most to us. Although Gatsby seemed “different” from everyone else, he resembled everyone else and suffered with his own flaws.