Time in The Great Gatsby Essay

In some of the stories written by Fitzgerald the symbolism of time has been tied into the themes. In the novel The Great Gatsby and the short story Winter Dreams time is shown as disillusionment and the destruction of dreams. Fitzgerald uses time as a way to comment on how dreams will never be obtainable. The characters in these stories such as Jay Gatsby and Dexter Green have dreams that make them live their lives for something that they could have had in their past.

Dreams are unobtainable when it requires the past to change. In The Great Gatsby this is most important to Jay Gatsby. "Luckily the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers and set it back in place. 'I'm sorry about the clock,' he said. 'It's an old clock,' I told him idiotically." (92) The clock symbolizes time and that with Gatsbys head resting on it he was putting too much pressure on it. Time simply could not support the demands that he was making. The symbolism of disillusionment becomes apparent when Gatsby tells Nick that he can repeat the past. "Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!" (116) Gatsby cannot turn back time even though he has all the money and wealth imaginable to get Daisy. Gatsby may have been so close to achieving his dream, but failed because the dream he had was false.

The idea that time will never run out to obtain a dream is the reason why dreams arent reached. In the short story Winter Dreams time slows down and becomes apparent to Dexter about Judy. After Judy leaves Dexter seems too careless about her and care more about the women he is about to marry. When Judy re-enters Dexters life at the party time slows down and becomes dream like. The familiar voice at his elbow startled him. Judy Jones had left a man and crossed the room to him--Judy Jones, a slender enamelled doll in cloth of gold: gold in a band at her head, gold in two slipper points at her dress's hem. The fragile glow of her face seemed to blossom as she smiled at him. A breeze of warmth and light blew through the room. His hands in the pockets of his dinner-jacket tightened spasmodically. He was filled with a sudden excitement.(635) It took him one look to have all the feelings he had for his dream of having Judy come rushing back. Dexter is stuck in the past with his dream and wont move on, he simply cannot. Dexters dream is unobtainable because he isnt suppose to have the finer things in life. He has always been second best. The dream was gone. Something had been taken from him. In a sort of panic he pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes and tried to bring up a picture of the waters lapping on Sherry Island and the moonlit veranda, and gingham on the golf-links and the dry sun and the gold color of her neck's soft down. And her mouth damp to his kisses and her eyes plaintive with melancholy and her freshness like new fine linen in the morning. Why, these things were no longer in the world! They had existed and they existed no longer.(639) In the end Dexter is brought back to reality when he realizes that he has lost his dream. Dexter has nothing left to live for and the life he lived from the first time he meet Judy was all based on an unobtainable dream.

The use of time in both stories shows how a dream can hold someone back from living their life. Both Gatsby and Dexter achieve wealth early on in their lives, only to find its products disillusioning; both of them lose the girl they love and not long after make her the center of their imaginary world they live in. Dexter in the end does accept the fact that he has lost Judy. But when he does he is overcome by a profound sense of loss. For Dexter, Judy had represented the glittering materialistic of his world. Once her beauty had faded and was no more, Dexters world became cold and gray and he had nothing to live for. For Gatsby, his dream of having Daisy stays with him when he dies. Gatsby had already put his dream behind him, locked away in the unchanging time that Fitzgerald laces throughout the story. He never sees Daisys beauty fade and therefore he didnt have the ability to give up is dream. Fitzgerald uses time to show that dreams will only keep you back from living your life, and that they will never be achieved because in the end they kill you.