During his interactions with Daisy near the middle of the novel, it is clear that Gatsby’s lifelong dream is beginning to draw to a close. After being reunited with Daisy and stumbling through the awkward tension between them, Gatsby laments about how if it were not for the rain, they would be able to see the green light on the end of Daisy’s dock at home. Immediately after saying this, he seems shocked.
“Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. [...] Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one” (98).
The green light …show more content…
His hyper-idolization of Daisy as an idea of a sort of nirvana led only to his own disappointment. His hope for what she would be like when they would finally reunited was dashed when they actually came face to face. If this fact and the idea of the green light are connected, it is clear that in the instance of Gatsby, having a dream such as this is colossally more important than achieving it. Before being reunited with Daisy, he could look out his window to her dock and see her green light, and that would bring him hope that someday, they could be the same people they were in the past. However, he is quick to dismiss the light’s significance as soon as they reunite, and before he realizes how different things truly are. Between his deification of Daisy and the fact that she changed drastically over the span of five years, the real and true her does not come anywhere close to the regards he holds her to, and the hope that things could stay the exact same as they had been disappeared as well. Now, he has not hope that Daisy will be the exact same, and he does not have the green light motif and hope to fall back on. Suddenly, Gatsby is now stuck in a terrible purgatory: he realizes his dream is not reality, but by “burning the bridges”, so to speak, of any other hope he once had, he is left stranded in this gray area. Had this
“Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. [...] Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one” (98).
The green light …show more content…
His hyper-idolization of Daisy as an idea of a sort of nirvana led only to his own disappointment. His hope for what she would be like when they would finally reunited was dashed when they actually came face to face. If this fact and the idea of the green light are connected, it is clear that in the instance of Gatsby, having a dream such as this is colossally more important than achieving it. Before being reunited with Daisy, he could look out his window to her dock and see her green light, and that would bring him hope that someday, they could be the same people they were in the past. However, he is quick to dismiss the light’s significance as soon as they reunite, and before he realizes how different things truly are. Between his deification of Daisy and the fact that she changed drastically over the span of five years, the real and true her does not come anywhere close to the regards he holds her to, and the hope that things could stay the exact same as they had been disappeared as well. Now, he has not hope that Daisy will be the exact same, and he does not have the green light motif and hope to fall back on. Suddenly, Gatsby is now stuck in a terrible purgatory: he realizes his dream is not reality, but by “burning the bridges”, so to speak, of any other hope he once had, he is left stranded in this gray area. Had this