And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
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 faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Although the novel is obviously concerned with post-war ‘modernist’ concerns of materialism and faithlessness, the ending of the Great Gatsby seems to transcend any prescriptive interpretation. For the rhythm of the prose engenders a sense of the poetry of existence which overwhelms any one particular knowledge. Remembrance is pivotal to our identity and Gatsby’s ‘wonder’ reveals his singularity, his awe-struck hope in the face of his ideal; even when that ideal is proved hollow and unworthy. Gatsby’s tragic fallibility and his compromised brilliance are suggested rather than identified by the narrator’s lexis. Carraway’s choice of ‘blue lawn’ , ‘green light’ and ‘wonder’ all privilege Gatsby’s sense of inspiration, his awe. The beat of the prose resembles a heart; Gatsby’s pulse of being is reanimated through the narrative of the only character to love him at all.
A parting gift and hypnotic requiem.