It’s fitting that our first post is focused on The Great Gatsby. Ever since I first read it in high school I have been in love with this, the most famous story F. Scott Fitzgerald ever wrote, to the point that I could easily call it one of my favorite novels. If I was forced to give it an actual numerical value on any sort of list I think it would be tied for first place with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a novel published in 1925 by author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story centers around Nick Carraway, a Yale University graduate who leaves behind his life in the Midwest to go to New York City and work in bonds. Nick finds himself tangled up in the dramatic life of the mysterious Mr. Gatsby as Gatsby tries to reunite with long-lost love Daisy Buchanan, Nick’s cousin.

The central theme of The Great Gatsby is the past. With many uses of symbolism to tie in this theme, none is so prevalent than Gatsby’s obsession with the past. His entire personality is built on trying to get back what he had with Daisy and in doing so Gatsby ends up losing more than what he gains.

The Plot

Spoilers Ahead

After moving from the Midwest to New York City (more specifically Long Island, on West Egg) and rents a small house that is next door to the infamous Mr. Jay Gatsby. Nick’s cousin, Daisy Buchanan, lives with her husband Tom across the bay on East Egg. Through Nick’s interactions with Tom Buchanan, we learn that Tom has a mistress named Myrtle Wilson and that Daisy knows. Tom tells Myrtle that Daisy is a catholic so they can’t get divorced, when in actuality Tom doesn’t want to divorce and would rather have his cake and eat it too by keeping both women rather than picking one. We know that Daisy knows about Myrtle because of this scene in Chapter One:

“The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking but I doubt even if Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy skepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind.”

— The Great Gatsby, Chapter One

After this dinner with Daisy, Daisy’s childhood friend Jordan Baker, and Tom, and after meeting Myrtle after going with Tom through the Valley of Ashes, Nick finds himself invited to a Gatsby party. Nick realizes, upon arrival, that he is the only one who has ever actually been invited to a Gatsby party. Everyone else in New York just shows up unannounced every weekend and no one is ever turned away. When Nick first meets Gatsby he seems larger than life. His stories are wild, some where he is a world traveller and others where he is a war hero. It is only when he produces a war medal that Nick believes any of it.

“Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.”

— The Great Gatsby, Chapter Four

We realize after Nick and Gatsby become friends, and after Gatsby gives Jordan Baker (another uninvited guest at his parties) the means to tell Nick the whole story about what happened between him and Daisy five years prior to the story’s start.

Before the start of the story, Gatsby was penniless son of farmers and had run away from home to seek a fortune that he always imagined he would have. He met a man named Dan Cody who raised him like a son and taught him to act like the kind of rich gentleman he wanted to be, but when Cody died his fortune went to his other children and left Gatsby poor once again. Gatsby joined the army, and while he was in the army attended a party at Daisy’s childhood home, where he met and fell in love with her. They were supposed to get married, but because the universe laughs whenever we pitiful humans make plans, Gatsby didn’t return after the war because he couldn’t marry Daisy as a poor man. He had to make his fortune first, and when he did they would be able to get married.

Well, Daisy didn’t want to wait that long. She married Tom Buchanan instead. The rest, as they say, is history.

Gatsby threw his parties in hopes that Daisy would wander in and he would be able to meet her again as a rich man, but she never did. It took Gatsby convincing Nick to invite Daisy over for tea for them to reunite and for an affair to flower between them. The parties at Gatsby’s stop without warning.

On the longest day of the year, Gatsby convinces Daisy that they need to come clean to Tom and tell him that she never loved him. Daisy panics and tries to stop him, but Tom sees something going on. The three of them, plus Nick and Jordan, agree that it’s too hot to stay in the Buchanan house any longer and opt instead to go to a hotel in the city. Tom takes Gatsby’s yellow car (which is unusual for the time, color-wise. The majority of cars in the ‘20s were black) with Nick and Jordan while Gatsby and Daisy take Tom’s car. Tom stops at Myrtle’s husband’s gas station, where he finds her husband in tears because he realized that Myrtle was having an affair. He tells Tom that they are going to leave and move away, sending Tom into a panic spiral because not only is he about to lose his wife to Gatsby but his mistress will be leaving him. The man who had two women was about to have none at all, and he didn’t like it one bit.

In the oppressive heat of the summer, boxed up in the stuffy hotel room, Tom and Gatsby have their big blowup over Daisy, who panics and tells Gatsby that she couldn’t say she never loved Tom. That there was a time when she loved him but she loved Gatsby too. Everyone leaves the hotel room in a hurricane of anger and hurt feelings, leaving Nick to remember that it is his birthday, and that he just turned thirty.

On the way home, Nick, Tom, and Jordan come upon a grisly scene. Myrtle Wilson, Tom’s mistress, has been run over by someone in a “yellow car,” which Gatsby and Daisy took away from the hotel. Tom tells Myrtle’s husband that it was Gatsby, but Nick later learns through Gatsby that it was Daisy who hit Myrtle. That she ran out into the street thinking it was Tom, because that was the car she saw him in earlier in the day, and that was how she died.

Gatsby stays up all night because Daisy was supposed to call him the next morning so they could make plans to run away together, and as he does he asks Nick to stay with him. This is where Nick finds out everything about Gatsby’s past. As the sun rises on a new day on West Egg, Gatsby implores Nick to stay with him a little longer. Work calls Nick away, however, but he promises to call. In response, Gatsby decides that he needs to use his pool. Summer is going to end soon and he hasn’t used it once all year.

As he is swimming, Myrtle Wilson’s heartbroken husband breaks into his house and shoots Gatsby in his pool before turning the gun on himself.

For all the people who came to Gatsby’s parties, not a single one showed up to his funeral. Nick talks about how no one but Gatsby’s father shows up for his funeral, and Daisy didn’t even send a flower. He tries to call her but is told by their made that Tom and Daisy have already left.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made . . .”

— The Great Gatsby, Chapter Nine

Nick ends up leaving New York City far more jaded than when he arrived.

Let’s Talk Symbolism

While there are numerous examples of symbolism in The Great Gatsby, let’s take a peek at a couple of my personal favorites:

East Egg vs. West Egg

The differences between East Egg and West Egg are important to the plot because each one conveys the concept of “New Money” and “Old Money,” which play a part in the personal dynamics of the characters. Tom and Daisy live on East Egg because they are considered “old money” and Gatsby lives on West Egg because he made his fortune himself (through nefarious means) and therefore quantifies as “new money.”

West Egg and East Egg also serve as symbolism for the characters. Lets look first at West Egg, specifically Gatsby’s mansion.

“I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming-pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion.”

— Nick Carraway, The Great Gatsby

Now, let’s look at Tom and Daisy’s mansion on East Egg.

“Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water . . . Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon . . .”

— Nick Carraway, The Great Gatsby

Tom and Daisy’s mansion fits in much better with the others on East Egg, while Gatsby’s equally as extravagant mansion somehow stands out and seems ostentatious. This is symbolic of the characters, because Tom and Daisy are the old money they put on display and have been their whole lives. Gatsby, however, acts like they do and looks like they do but is not like him in the way he wants to be.

A Daisy by Any Other Name

Everything about Daisy Buchanan oozes symbolism, even down to her name.

Let’s look at the properties of a daisy. Their golden centers are surrounded by delicate white petals. Now, if you’re at all familiar with the symbolism of color, gold symbolizes greed and inner ugliness while white symbolizes purity and sweetness. That is how we see Daisy’s character portrayed: She seems sweet and pure on the outside. That’s how she wants you think of her. That’s likely how she thinks of herself. But her insides are greedy and ugly. She wants money more than real, honest love. She marries Tom and stays married to him even though he has cheated on her practically from day one, and when Gatsby comes back into her life she uses him to punish Tom for those indiscretions. She uses the sweetness that Gatsby remembers from their youth together to manipulate him into becoming her tool for revenge and when he dies she acts as though she has never even heard of him.

The Green Light

As obsessed as Gatsby is with the past, the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock represents his hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and at the end of chapter one Nick can see Gatsby reaching out to it as if it is a guiding light to his goals.

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but thats no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther . . . and one fine morning—

We we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. ”