What Does The Green Light Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

In the novel, The Great Gatsby, the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, uses a couple major symbols instead of many small ones in order to drive his readers look deeper into the bigger picture. Fitzgerald captures more than just a rich man in love with a rich woman; instead, through modest symbols, he shows a man who did and said anything to be rich for one end goal: Daisy. Fitzgerald deftly uses the green light, the billboard, and the owl-eyed man as symbols to advance his plot and enhance the quality of the novel.
The green light at the end of Daisy and Tom Buchanan’s dock is an important symbol and helps to guide Gatsby to Daisy, his former lover. Not only is the green light a symbol in this portion of the novel, but Gatsby’s mansion is significant,

for it represents his love for her. Gatsby bought his mansion specifically to be close to Daisy, with just a bay separating them. “-he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. 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” (Fitzgerald 24). Gatsby often reaches out for this light, representing that he is reaching out for Daisy, and/or the future that he hopes to have. By acknowledging the green light, Gatsby reassures himself that an opportunity to reunite with Daisy still exists across the water.
Another prominent symbol Fitzgerald uses pertains to a greater being looking down upon those driving between East and West Egg.

Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, an optometrist, has a larger than life billboard overlooking the Valley of Ashes. The billboard, a painting of two large eyes behind glasses, glares over the abandoned landscape. “That locality was always vaguely disquieting, even in the broad glare of afternoon, and now I turned my head as though I had been warned of something behind. Over the ashheaps the giant eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg kept their vigil but I perceived, after a moment, that other eyes were regarding us with peculiar intensity from less than twenty feet away” (Fitzgerald 132). Nick always felt eerily about the billboard, like they disappointed at what the once beautiful land has turned into. The eyes symbolize those of God looking down upon those who live or pass through the Valley of Ashes; they appear to be casting constant judgement on the people’s actions, such as Tom traveling there to cheat on Daisy, Gatsby and Daisy’s hit and run accident, and the even broader picture, what the working class has to live in, versus the luxurious and wealthy East and West

Egg.
The second notable pair of eyes that might not seem as significant are those of the owl-eyed man.

Nick and Jordan meet this man in Gatsby’s library. The owl-eyed man is shown looking through Gatsby’s books and he notices something that no one else would have saw. “It’s a bona fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me. This fella’s a regular Belasco.It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too—didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?” (Fitzgerald 50). What the owl-eyed man is referring to is when book are new, the pages used to come uncut, and to read the book, you have to slice it open. These uncut books represent that Gatsby’s world is a facade; He wants people to believe that he is an Oxford man and that he is scholarly, but in fact he is a fraud. The owl-eyed man is the only character who sees and understands the truth about Gatsby. Although he knows about Gatsby’s lies, he still sympathizes with him; He is the only person, besides Nick and Gatsby’s father, who attends his

funeral.
Fitzgerald cleverly uses the green light, the billboard for T.J. Eckleburg, and the owl-eyed man as symbols to enhance the plot and thicken the complexity of the protagonist. The green light represents what Gatsbys wants and aspires to have, the billboard represents the eyes of god looking shamefully down on society, and the owl-eyed man symbolizes a better understanding of Gatsby as a fraud.