“And as I sat there brooding on the
old, unknown world, I thought of 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 it 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.
Gatsby believed in the green light,
the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but
that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther....
And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the
current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (Fitzgerald 180).
These final three paragraphs of
Fitzgerald’s literary masterpiece,
The Great Gatsby, are some of the
most memorable and truly awe-inspiring sentences of the world of English literature.
Fitzgerald uses the motif of time and the symbol of the “green light” to
coherently convey his point. Nick describes how Gatsby’s “green light” of being
with Daisy “seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it” yet “[Gatsby]
did not know [his dream] was already behind him.” This obliviousness of Gatsby
suggests that he was travelling through time at a speed too great to handle
that everything around him became a blur and the impossible task of going back
in time and “acquiring” Daisy was the sole thing in Gatsby’s life that was in
clear focus. Regarding the syntax of the
second paragraph, I noticed how the final dash causes an abrupt end to the
sentence, sparking the sense of continuation. This suggests that although
Gatsby died an unfortunate death, his dream or “green light” of living with
Daisy still lives on. Also regarding the syntax, I further noticed how the
length of the breaks in the paragraph increases as the paragraph progresses.
This indicates the increasing distance between Gatsby and Daisy as time
progresses. Five years ago in the book, Daisy and Gatsby were charming lovers,
but as time passed when Gatsby fought in the war, the distance between them
grew literally and metaphorically with Tom now in between them. Eventually this
distance is the greatest when Gatsby dies. This increasing distance also
demonstrates how the current of time is so strong that no matter how much “we
beat on [like] boats against a current” to go back to the past, the distance
between the past and the present reality increases as we are swept away by the “ceaseless”
forward momentum of time.
