A Single Green Light

A Single Green Light

The Great Gatsby (1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald)

by Liv Atterson

Francis Scott Fitzgerald is one of the greatest American authors to ever live. His works have sold millions of copies and still do almost one-hundred years later. Mostly known for his book The Great Gatsby, a book that is not even 200 pages, is one of the most celebrated works in American literature. This story is told during the summer of 1922 and focuses on the life of Jay Gatsby--a self-made millionaire, who lives next door to our narrator Nick Carraway. With Fitzgerald's novel's known to hold an abundance of symbolism, one of the most iconic symbols being the green light. Is the light at the end of Daisy's dock a symbol of wealth or is it a symbol of desire for Daisy's herself? When readers first see Gatsby he is fixated on the green light and as his relationship with daisy slowly evolves, the connection of Daisy and the green light slowly becomes stronger.

Gatsby is introduced with his back to Nick, his mind far from Long Island. He is standing at the end of a dock with his arm outstretched towards an unknown light. Fitzgerald describes it as “[…]a single green light, minute and far way, that might have been at the end of a dock” (21). It is never explained exactly what the light is for or what type of light it is. The reader can assume that it is a docking light or possibly one to guide boats home in the night. This is just a light to many of the characters in the book and many others that do not even realize that this light exists. The first time Nick sees this light he describes it as this bright green mass at the end of a dock, glowing bright in the distance as a tiny green speck in the night. But through the eyes of Nick, that is all that it is… a light. A guide for ships and boats in the dark waters? But for Gatsby it is so much more than, as Fitzgerald put it, “[…]a single green light” (Fitzgerald, 21). This light has been the closest that Gatsby has gotten to Daisy in years. It is this bright green orb that is so far, yet so close; a dream that is just out of reach for a man that is living the American dream.

This light has slipped into Gatsby’s life without him even realizing it, he begins to unconsciously connect this light to Daisy, just as one might associate two things as being related due to their proximity to one another.

After Nick invites Daisy over to his house for tea under false pretenses, she ends up on a date with Gatsby. That is when Gatsby decides to have Daisy over to his house for the first time, with Nick third-wheeling it big time at the request of Gatsby. Daisy is being given the tour of Gatsby’s room and looks out the window across the Sound and Gatsby begins to explain to Daisy about the light that sits at the end of her lawn. It is as Gatsby is explaining this out loud for possibly the first time that he is realizing that the green light is just a light and not some colossus enchanted object; it is just a light and Daisy is just a girl:

‘You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.’ […] Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of the light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one. (Fitzgerald, 93)

Gatsby’s doubts are beginning to creep in and this is acknowledged by both Nick and Gatsby slightly on page ninety-five. Gatsby talks about how during that afternoon, Daisy fell short of Gatsby’s expectations, but not due to anything that she did. Gatsby had built this unachievable fantasy of Daisy that had only grown in size day after day without ever really getting know who the actually Daisy was. He, Gatsby, had fallen in love with the idea of Daisy as oppose to Daisy herself. Once Gatsby saw that she could not possibly reach these expectations or ideologies, his vision of her begin to flicker and she becomes no more than a mere girl:

[…] There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart. (Fitzgerald, 95-96)

Nick even seems to acknowledge that this whole ideology that Gatsby has about Daisy is a mere illusion, one that no women would be able to reach no matter how hard they tried.

The last time that the light is mentioned is after Gatsby has been shot by Gorge Wilson after the murder of his—Gorge’s—wife by Gatsby’s now-titled “death car”. Nick is standing out on the dock where Gatsby first stood at the end of chapter one looking out towards the light. Nick talks about how Gatsby believed in the green light with everything that he had even though it seemed to get a little further away each year. But no matter the obstacles that tried to get in his way Gatsby continued to go forward and then on fine morning…. With his boat against the strong current he tore into the past.

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run fast, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning—

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

Throughout the novel, Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy is strengthened by the presence of the green light that sits glowing in front of her house. In the beginning, it is as if Gatsby is in this fantasy dreaming about Daisy as he stares at the light. Not until afterwards, when he finally has daisy at his house, in his room and is explaining the light to her, does he only begin to see her as a girl and not a light.