Great Gatsby - The Green Light

Green Means Go

The future is what we sometimes look forward to and can change; the past is what we remember and cannot change. As we “stretch out our arms further” and further into the future, the future soon becomes the past, and the present soon becomes the future. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”(p.189) We never know what the future holds for us, but we will always know what the past held for us. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a small little green light represented the future for Jay Gatsby, a newly wealthy businessman. Gatsby wants to know his future, but all Jay knows is his past and his present. This small simple little green light appears to Jay telling him to “go” and it gives Gatsby a path into the future with his dream girl Daisy, even though the future will soon become the past.
Jay prefers to move on and forget everything about the past except for his past with Daisy Buchanan. At ag...