15. Colors

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

I have discovered through the course of reading this book that color seems to be of high importance throughout the book- especially the green light seemed to arise often with the picture of Gatsby reaching out to it from across the water. In the end, Nick returns to Gatsby's home, staring out into the sky from the comfort of the beach. He describes the scene with the "moving gloss of a ferryboat across the Sound", and the "old island" that had appeared "flowered once for Dutch sailors" (Fitzgerald, 180). Colors and imagery in this last section seem to "commensurate a capacity for wonder" and represent a larger truth. The green light is again referenced, and is assigned a definition, "the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us" (Fitzgerald, 180). The problem with this metaphor to me is that it's far too depressing, that this light is never attained, not by Gatsby, and seemingly in this section the author seems to believe that it is never attained, and that we will continue to "run faster, stretch out our arms, farther", but we will not ever come to a definite close, a satisfactory ending because we are far too focused on the past to get anywhere. This is a terrible ending. It acknowledges that yes, we as humans are optimistic, but that that green light is never going to be within reach because the current will always be pushing us into the past.