the ocean always dreamed blue dreams

We're reading "The Great Gatsby" in my class, and I gave the students the assignment of writing a one page essay in which they discuss the use of light in Chapter V. We went over it point by point, and I told them that the light was used to reflect the emotions of the Daisy and Gatsby. I don't think they quite got it, but they tried. Anyway, I wrote one myself as an example for them, so as follows:


Gatsby and the Light
It is not until the fifth chapter that Gatsby and Daisy finally meet and it was not until Chapter Four that it was revealed that this meeting was Gatsby’s whole idea in building his magnificent house and in acquiring his bloated and possibly illegal wealth.

It was for this reason that he built his house in little, unworthy West Egg (did he know it did not have the antecedents necessary to be the home of so grand an owner?). Daisy-and Tom’s-house lies directly across the bay. He can see the green light of her dock from his house. And in so seeing, he is able to hold her and his dream so close, so close to his heart.

At the appointed time Daisy arrives, her car coming to rest “under the dripping bare lilac trees,” her face looking out at Nick from under a three-cornered lavender hat, lit by a bright, ecstatic smile. But the tension quickly ratchets up with Gatsby’s appearance. He is deeply uncomfortable, as well he should be, and Nick, trying to give them some time alone, retires to the yard to contemplate Gatsby’s house, like Kant his church steeple. It is interesting that Fitzgerald makes this allusion at this time. Would Kant’s categorical imperative help either of these rather lost people make a better decision over the next few weeks? Could it help, or is it all already lost? Daisy, after all, had already decided once not to wait for young James Gatz to return from the war. For his part, Gatsby today would seem less a romantic figure than one caught in a web of obsession.

Nevertheless, when Nick goes back inside, the sun is shining, and Gatsby “literally glowed” and we know that the fateful connection has been made.

Does it matter that Daisy weeps over his beautiful shirts or wishes to push Gatsby around in the “pink and golden billow of foamy clouds above the sea”? For in acquiring Daisy’s presence, Gatsby’s “count of enchanted objects has diminished by one”: the green light at the end of the dock is no longer a shining star luring him toward its untouchable brightness with its beauty. It is simply, once again, a green light, no longer invested with a noble cause.

Gatsby might, somewhere in the recesses of his great dreamer’s heart, know this. At one point Nick, unreliable narrator that he may be sees “that the expression of bewilderment had come back into Gatsby’s face, as though a faint doubt had occurred to him as to the quality of his present happiness.” But with the determination and perseverance that has marked the five years leading to this moment he shakes it off. He does not understand, it seems that people cannot be brought to heel as money can. People are light and shadow, with depth or without, and that is what he must judge; they are not golden coins to be lost or acquired as he wills. So even while he is in thrall to the “deathless song” of Daisy’s voice, even while they sit together, “possessed by intense life,” it has begun to rain again.

Qimissung
December 2010