Great Gatsby Essay Prompt #1: What methods are emplyoed by Fitzgerald to convey meaning to the audience? Explain at least two examples of symbolism in the novel.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a well known American literary piece detailing the vicissitudes and resulting effects of American upper-crust life in the Roaring Twenties. Throughout the novel, characters, locations, items, and behaviors are meant to symbolize the sundry qualities of ostentatious prosperity during this time period, and Fitzgerald utilizes such symbolism to great effect. Contrast and juxtaposition is one of the methods Fitzgerald employs in order to convey meaning to the audience; a good example of contrast in Fitzgerald’s novel is Jay Gatsby’s house as compared to Daisy’s dock with its green light. Taken individually, each of these elements presents powerful symbolism on its own, giving apropos commentary on the way of life for American elite at that time. The green light on Daisy’s Dock, for instance, can be taken to represent the distant allure of the American dream itself, of prosperity and happiness just out of reach; Gatsby’s house can be taken to represent excessive, hedonistic living with its wild, frequent parties and lavish conditions, its intrinsic merit too quickly forgotten amidst materialistic desire for more. When put together, these two concepts are made even more powerful as a contrasting juxtaposition of happy, rightful pursuit of a good dream with ignorance of one’s existing, prosperous accomplishments. These ideas of distant goals contrasting with forgotten, material accomplishments prove central to Fitzgerald’s work in communicating ideas regarding the vapidity to which American culture had degraded and its dream been perverted without anyone knowing it.
As the novel begins, the audience is introduced to the narrator, one Nick Carraway, an American individual of moderate money earned by his own labors who has taken up residence on Long Island during the Roaring Twenties period of United States History. Nick Carraway is gradually immured into the Long Island life of the new rich versus the established elite, of rivalry between West Egg and East Egg, of empty materialism and the pursuit of happiness. Eventually, Nick’s neighbor, Jay Gatsby (who was originally born James Gatz before making his fortune) invites him to one of his many lavish parties, and the two form a somewhat close bond over the latter’s pursuit of the heart of one Daisy Buchanan, a girl he had loved once before in the past. This connection drastically influences Nick’s perceptions, so the story, as related by Carraway, is not to be taken as gospel, but it communicates powerful meaning nonetheless, for extensive rumination is given by Nick about his circumstances and the circumstances of those around him. Jay Gatsby is killed by the end of the story as consequence of a hit-and-run accident he was accomplice to, and Nick finds that after all was said and done, Gatsby was left with no close loved ones besides his father and Carraway himself to attend his funeral. This sad existence is the result of a conflict illustrated by the symbolism proffered by Fitzgerald throughout the course of the story, the ostentatious house of Gatsby demonstrating material accomplishment but empty living with “...men and girls [who] came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars” (Fitzgerald 39). That green light on Daisy Buchanan’s dock is Gatsby’s dream that “...must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it” (Fitzgerald 180), symbolizing the American dream. This is the powerful thought that Nick Carraway is left with and leaves the audience with.
In spite of the magnitude of their connection to one another, the two locations - Gatsby’s domicile and Daisy’s dock - differ greatly, which, in fact, contributes to their powerful presence. The story, as it is related by the narrator, Nick Carraway, makes Gatsby’s house out to be a hedonistic, materialistic, vapid paradise. This location is emblematic of what American culture had been reduced to during a decade of maximal prosperity, idolizing consumerism and materialism with wanton abandon above all. Parties at this domicile are detailed to be wild and chaotic with guests appearing at will without invitation, delving directly and immediately into a fray of ecstatic merry-making; aptly, this begs the question of the value of such behavior. Flaunting wealth and power is all well and good, but what value exists in such practices? Even early on, Nick Carraway is made to feel the burden of this lifestyle, claiming, “I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life” (Fitzgerald 35). Such an admittance of the quality of this living by the narrator is not to be taken lightly, giving a window in the psyche of many Americans during that time period who felt compelled to pursue something they did not, deep down, truly desire. As described, this Greek perversion is offered a juxtaposition in the form of Daisy’s dock, for the latter is indeed a contrasting element. The dock, with its shining green light making it visible from a great distance, offers the allure of something better than hedonistic, empty partying; it offers a promise of a better future, existing as an apparition of all that is truly desired: happiness and fulfillment.
The power of the contrast of these two story elements is derived from how it is designed to reflect the perversion of the American dream. As Jay Gatsby seeks to fulfill his American dream - one of the pursuit of happiness, of life, of liberty, and of prosperity - he achieves great material wealth, accruing a significant fortune by means implied to be rather illicit in nature. This material wealth is celebrated by all who come to see Gatsby, , who arrive for the sole purpose of merrymaking with no meaningful living whatsoever being practiced, with “...casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other’s names” (Fitzgerald, 40). Gripped by a new consumerist culture and a pervading Zeitgeist of prosperity just around the corner for every Jay, Nick, and Tom, the United States of America promoted at this time, culturally, an idea of that ethereal ‘American Dream’ as one that required financial accomplishment and exercise to be considered true and final. This was “the blue lawn” that Nick Carraway referred to at the end of the novel, the one that Gatsby had strived to cross, the bay that separated East and West Egg, happiness from emptiness. Somewhere along the way, Gatsby, like many Americans, was caught up in the importance of making that journey across “the blue lawn” stand out, leading to his eventual failure to complete the crossing in full.
Daisy’s dock, with its green light, is ethereal, incorporeal, like any green ghost. The dock exists merely as a representation of aspiration, not the end goal itself, and it should not have been taken by Gatsby to be his final aim. East Egg and West Egg were separated geographically by only some scant miles, but they were separated in all other qualities by leagues. East Egg was an unreachable, unreasonable dream of joining the established upper-class of the United States East Coast, unfathomable for all but those in West Egg, like Jay Gatsby, who thought that the physical boundary was all that remained. The contrast of these locations, house and dock, West Egg and East Egg, highlights vital lessons Fitzgerald conveyed. “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-tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…” (Fitzgerald, 180) narrates Carraway. This belief is summation of those vital lessons, of the concrete establishment of class separation in the United States of America, of empty materialism being a pointless end unto itself, and of endless optimism to aspire to true happiness being the one remaining course to American dream-seekers. It questions the value of that journey but acknowledges its extant viability. How can humans proceed if not given some sort of hope to continue onwards? By contrasting the house and the dock, Fitzgerald illustrated succinctly the interminable struggle of Americans against all obstacles to attain something that may not truly exist except in their hearts, leaving the audience on a note of cautious optimism to continue on, for it is the only course left.
And so, F. Scott Fitzgerald closes The Great Gatsby with a fine proclamation narrated by Nick Carraway: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” The dream is constantly moving out of reach, the goalposts ever-shifting, and it is apt to note how Gatsby’s house and Daisy’s dock are redolent of the American journey. Material fulfillment is all well and good, but there is an insatiable drive and desire in all humans for something greater. Whether that something greater may be fulfilled is questionable, indeterminate. Certainly, however, Gatsby made a valiant effort to realize his dreams by accomplishing first the material end before the ethereal one; he just happened to come up short, leaving his empty house behind with no loved ones, his only true love in the arms of another on the other side of that broad, narrow chasm between house and dock.