Weather In The Great Gatsby

In the passage presented from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald presents the ditsy but bright Daisy and the naïve but ambitious Gatsby as an unlikely pair, mutually falling to destruction from their own superficial infatuation with each other. Gatsby’s counterfeit wealth and façade of leisurely composure aide in bringing out Daisy’s shallow love for Gatsby. In illuminating this contrast between the two characters, Fitzgerald utilizes weather imagery as well as the symbolism of time to reveal the pretention behind the long sought-after American Dream. Early in the passage, the setting is described by narrator Nick Carraway as “dripping bare lilac-trees” and hosting Daisy as she awaits Gatsby coolly beneath her lavender hat …show more content…
Nick describes firsthand the scene that unfolds during Gatsby and Daisy’s reunion as Gatsby’s head hits an old mantelpiece clock, challenging it’s balance, “Luckily the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers, and set it back in place.” The clock is an obvious representative of time, not only in a daily fashion but on a life spectrum as well. Throughout the novel, Gatsby struggles to differentiate between the past and the present as he endeavors to fall back into the nostalgia held so carefully by his past. This was a major problem during the 1920s as people were becoming more and more aware of their role in the world physically, spiritually, and religiously. Many people struggled with the idea of being totally in control, including Fitzgerald. Speaking through Nick, Fitzgerald writes “I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor.” Reaching towards the idea of the disarray caused by the American Dream, Fitzgerald again elucidates upon the idea that wealth and class will always come between the prospects of love when it is in the eyes of the