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Green Light In The Great Gatsby Essay

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Green Light In The Great Gatsby Essay
The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald captures the disparity between the poor and wealthy in New York City in the Nineteen-Twenties. In this novel there are many images that help to pull the story together. Three of those images I feel are very significant to the story. The single green light on Daisy’s dock that Gatsby spends countless nights staring at across the lake is, in my opinion, the most significant image in the book. The light represents Gatsby’s unattainable dream to be with Daisy. He is so close to her yet so far. He fails to grasp this dream with her. I believe the green light represents the uncertain future. As Nick claims at the end of the novel “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes …show more content…
Eckleburg, a billboard that was built to promote the ophthalmologist. Throughout the story the pair of eyes watches just like the eyes of God himself. George Wilson explains this to his wife Myrtle through the window and tells her she cannot fool God. “‘I spoke to her,’ he muttered, after a long silence. ‘I told her she might fool me but she couldn't fool God. I took her to the window’- with an effort he got up and walked to the rear window and leaned with his face pressed against it- ‘ and I said ‘God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me, but you can't fool God!’” (pg.159). This image also shows the extreme disregard to religion, God is shown as an advertisement, a simple billboard.
Gatsby’s mansion is also a crucial image. The mansion was bought from all the illegal bootlegging Gatsby did to acquire his riches. This possesion represents Gatsby's facade. He wants people to believe he has always been rich and a well mannered gentleman but in reality he was just a dirty bootlegger. “It was a factual imitation of some Hotel De Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more forty acres of lawn and garden, It was Gatsby's mansion.” (pg.5). The mansion proves that Gatsby is very deceptive person.
In the end Gatsby’s dream consumes him. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses strong imagery to convey his themes in The Great Gatsby. After reading the novel you can feel the true disparity in the world after all dreams can’t always come

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