The Relationship Between Dream And Reality In The Great Gatsby And A Streetcar Named Desire

Superior Essays
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and Tennessee William’s play A Streetcar Named Desire we are able to see the relationship between dream and reality through the symbol of light shown in both plays. As both stories progress, we see that the main characters of both novels, Gatsby and Blanche dwell on their past relationships and they both use the symbol of light to show the dreams that they really have . Gatsby uses the light as a symbol for Daisy who he dreams of having a relationship with and Blanche uses the light to remind her of her husband who recently died who she dearly loved. Since Gatsby and Blanche are unable to accept the reality, it causes them to obsess over the symbol of light, making them caught up in a dream that …show more content…
The narrator Nick showed his interest initially in the book for Daisy but that is later taken over by Gatsby’s love for her. Fitzgerald shows this by dropping subtle hints when talking about Daisy but he also gets very descriptive sometimes when he talks about Gatsby’s affection for her. A good example of this is early in the book when Nick describes Daisy by saying,“For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened, then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.” (14)Fitzgerald decided that he would show very early that Daisy was very beautiful and that would help show Gatsby’s love for her. This set the tone for the rest of the book because the readers can see that Gatsby has this dream and he will be chasing it for the rest of the story. Later in the first chapter, Gatsby is introduced into the in more depth novel. They …show more content…
Since the greenlight is always at the dock, Gatsby uses this as a symbol for Daisy. He has a slight understanding that Daisy has moved on from him and she is with Tom now but the greenlight serves as a dream and a symbol for him. One night, when they were in East Egg at Daisies, Gatsby was able to to talk to her and he eventually said,“You always have that green light that burns at the end of the dock” (92) Since the greenlight was a symbol for Daisy in Gatsby’s mind, once he was able to talk to her the symbol became less and less important. He was perplexed by the fact that he was able to talk to Daisy. Fitzgerald later shows that the greenlight symbol had less meaning when he said,“Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.” (93) This greenlight had been so important to Gatsby and since he was able to talk to Daisy finally he was caught by surprise. Although the symbol of the light at the time meant less for Gatsby, we see later on in the novel that he was not over this symbol and it did eventually pick up a bigger meaning towards the

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