Great Gatsby the Green Light Term Paper

Total Length: 1150 words ( 4 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 1

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The characters have to travel through this Hell to reach the "paradise" of New York City, the place where they work, play, and show off their wealth.

The eyes also symbolize the emptiness of the character's lives. They have money and lavish lifestyles, but none of them are happy. In fact, many of them end up dead by the end of the novel. The blue eyes on the billboard are empty of life, and so are the characters, so they are watched over by empty eyes as they go about their very empty lives. Daisy sums this up late in the novel when she says, "What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?' cried Daisy, 'and the day after that, and the next thirty years?' 'Don't be morbid,' Jordan said" (Fitzgerald 118). These people seem to have everything they could ever want or need, and yet, they are unhappy in their souls and in their reactions to life. The emptiness of the "wasteland" they have to travel through each day mirrors the wasteland in their hearts and their minds. They are as empty as the wasteland, and not just because they are shallow, but because they have no intellectual interests that stimulate their minds. They spend their nights drinking, socializing, and trying to outdo each other in money and possessions, but they do not exercise their minds, and so their lives are empty and bleak like the land where the billboard stands and watches over them.

6. In the end, Jay Gatsby is a sad, even pathetic figure in this novel. He finds out the woman he adores really does not love him like he thought, he finds the separation between old money and new money is far too great, and he is threatened with exposure of his underhanded business dealings.
He has tried to become something he is not, and it has made him a very tragic and sad figure. Nick, the narrators says late the in the novel, "He [Gatsby] must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon he scarcely created grass" (Fitzgerald 162). Gatsby is not pathetic because his life is falling apart around him and he does not fit into the society he so desperately craves. He is pathetic because he has had dreams of Daisy for so long they have become his only dreams. When he discovers she really does not love him, he has nothing left to hope for or dream about, and that is what makes him such a tragic character. Nick sums up the emptiness of his life at the end of the story, when he talks about Gatsby's funeral. He thinks, "The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn't any use. Nobody came" (Fitzgerald 175). Gatsby's life is a waste, because he has hoped for things he can never attain, and loved a woman who does not love him. You have to feel sorry for a man like that. Fitzgerald has created a strong character with a fatal character flaw - Daisy. He is sad, tragic, and even pathetic, and you cannot help but pity him at the end of the novel......

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"Great Gatsby The Green Light" (2007, September 19) Retrieved May 5, 2024, from
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"Great Gatsby The Green Light", 19 September 2007, Accessed.5 May. 2024,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/great-gatsby-green-light-35710