Meaningful The Green Light For Gatsby example essay topic

Symbols have very significant meanings in the novel The Great Gatsby. With the symbols, the narrator, Fitzgerald, let the reader to imagine or feel the situation on the scene. There are no right or wrong when the reader describes the symbols because it relates to their own felling. Consequently, Fitzgerald uses many symbols on his novel The Great Gatsby. There are 2 important symbols depicted in this novel. They are the green light, which is related to Nick and Gatsby, and the colored shirts, which is related to Nick and Daisy.

In Chapter One, we are introduced to the green light. The green light is very meaningful to Jay Gatsby because it comes from the end of Daisy's dock. As Gatsby looks at the light, he knows that it is his dream that he have to reach. It is his dream since five years ago to marry Daisy, but because of some reasons, he could not come back from the war.

Instead, he only sends a letter to Daisy, which then makes Daisy to change her mine in marrying Tom. After she receives the letter, she feels very sad. She keeps crying and crying " and she would not let go of the letter". After her mother convince her, she has no choice but marrying Tom. By looking at the green light, Gatsby imagine Daisy is there near the dock and waiting for him to come and see her. Gatsby also bought a mansion across the bay so that he can be closer to Daisy.

At night, the green light has more meaning to Gatsby because he can recognize Daisy's house by looking at the light. For Nick, the green light has no meaning at all because he just sees it as an ordinary light or probably because he does not know that the light comes from the end of Daisy's dock. That is why he wondered why one night Gatsby was trembling when he looked at the green light for a long time. Later, Nick finds out the meaning of the green light for Gatsby as Miss Baker tell him a story about the reason Gatsby buy a mansion near the bay and held a party once a week on Saturday. For himself, Nick still feels that the green light is just an ordinary light, even after he knows how meaningful the green light for Gatsby. Another symbol illustrated in The Great Gatsby is the colored shirts.

Daisy feels that the shirts, piling like bricks in stacks a dozen high on Gatsby's bed, are very meaningful to her. Those shirts have two most important meanings for her, which is: it shows that Gatsby still loves her even after they have been separated for almost five years and he is not a soldier anymore, which is the only thing that take them apart from each other. What makes Daisy very pleased is not only the fact that Gatsby is no longer becomes a soldier, but also because now he is a well-off person who owns a big mansion in West Egg Village. Gatsby keeps buying a selection of various shirts at the beginning of each season from England without even wearing them because he just wants to show all the shirts to Daisy. Daisy looks at the entire shirts, from shirts with strips and scrolls, green shirts, lavender shirts, to the faint orange shirts with a monogram of Indian Blue.

After looking at the last shirts, which are Indian blue, she begins to cry because she realizes that she has taken the wrong step in marrying Tom Buchanan, a man that she thought would be a good husband. Tom turns out to be an unfaithful husband, for he has already had an affair with one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel in his third month of marriage. For Nick, the shirt symbolizes prosperity. He knows that Gatsby is a wealthy person since he sees that Gatsby has no problem buying all those shirts from England. Gatsby also tells Nick that all the shirts he bought are from England because he wants to show Nick that he is a wealthy person. Somehow, Nick is jealous with Gatsby's prosperity since Gatsby has everything in his life.

Gatsby drives a limousine; in other hand Nick just drive a Dodge. Gatsby live in a big mansion and Nick only live in an ordinary house that he describes it as a cardboard bungalow. Yet, a cop does not have the courage to give Gatsby a ticket when he is speeding; Gatsby life is very smooth. Because of his prosperity, Gatsby never faces the reality. He thinks that everything will be under the control of money. In conclusion, the narrator keeps illustrating many symbols so that the reader can have more understanding about the situation of the story.

Mostly, the symbols are used to describe the situation between Gatsby and Daisy, whereas Nick never tells the reader about his feeling for those symbols. We describe the meaning of those symbols for Nick by using our feeling, so readers sometimes will have different opinion for the meanings of those symbols.