The colour green is also a major colour symbol associated within the Great Gatsby as I mentioned in my previous blog. The Green Light Blog is the name of my blog for a reason, as it represents the immense hope felt by Gatsby that motivated him and drove his ambition for wealth. It represents his hope of one day restoring the relationship with Daisy as he stares at this green light at the end of her dock every night. Nick calls this light an “enchanted object” which is true because that is what symbols are in literature and in real life. At the beginning of the novel when Nick first catches sight of Gatsby he is reaching out to the green light but as Nick observes it is “minute and far away.” This alludes that it is almost impossible to reach which is true up until a certain point. After the successful reunion of Daisy and Gatsby in chapter five this enchanted object is no longer unreachable and loses its importance in Gatsby’s life. "Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever....Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one" (p.90). The importance of this symbol to Gatsby is made clear through Nick’s comparison of the light to how America must have looked to the early settlers. “For a transitory, enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent,compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder” (p.171). Gatsby’s wonder of this light that became an enchanted symbol to him shows his hope, but this hope can not always be a reality.
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