Flashback and Night and Day in the Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald Writes About Time Destroying Opportunity
Dec 11, 2008
Fitzgerald writes, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” typifying humans’ incapability to relinquish their dreams but hopelessly traps them in the ruthless destruction of time (180). A dreamer is ensnared between pursuing the future and recreating the past. Fitzgerald writes of flashbacks, night and day, portraying time as a finite opportunity.
Fitzgerald's Flashbacks
Flashbacks allow a perspective to be warped either to demean or foster idealism, yet characters are forced to succumb to the decadence of the human spirit because they can only reflect on the past and never relive it.
After a two year respite, Nick Carraway retells the story of Gatsby saying, “[he] turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby” that brought him to his demise (2). Through flashback Nick is able to describe Gatsby objectively, enabling the reader to see, that time preyed on Gatsby. Time’s ruthless “dust [floats] in the wake of [Gatsby’s] dreams” (2). The dust forever infects his dreams— time always thwarting its fruition. But flashbacks also delude Fitzgerald’s characters.
Gatsby’s limitless possibilities are exemplified when Daisy “[blossoms] for [Gatsby}” (110). In his recollection, Gatsby sees infinite hope, yet time traps Gatsby because dreams cannot be accomplished retrospectively. The juxtaposition of Nick’s flashbacks with Gatsby’s flashbacks show how time can delude a man into believing in dreams; ultimately, man is forced to succumb to the ticks of the clock because one can never relive the past.
Flashbacks force characters to be destroyed by their former desires because memories are cemented into the past.
Night and Day
The repetition of sunrises and sunsets subject dreamers to a continual struggle with fulfillment. Jordan Baker has “sun-strained eyes [that look] back at [Nick] with…curiosity out of a wan…discontented face” (11). The repetition of sunrises and sunsets subject dreamers to a continual struggle with fulfillment. Dreams wear away the vitality of a person, yet the vicious cycle of the world turning never allows a person to relinquish the day. New days grant the opportunity and hope for a dream to be realized.
Daisy tells her guests how she always watches for the longest day of the year but always misses it. The longest day— or the misconception that dreams have an eternity to be accomplished, allows Daisy to realize that dreams slip from a person’s grasp. Like Daisy missing her opportunity to marry Gatsby, time relinquishes the possibility of attainment— the dream is never eternally at noon, or its peak of opportunity, so dreams are lost with time.
Gatsby believes he has forever to accomplish his dreams. Every night Gatsby “[regards] the silver pepper of the stars” assuring himself that he has limitless possibilities. The sky is catered to him every night, but with the break of morning, his dreams vanish as the stars whisper into the dawn. Gatsby suffers from the perpetual tease of dreams; midnight allows him to “determine what share [is] his of [their] local heavens” (20).
References to night and day provide characters with the hope of a dream to be accomplished, subjecting characters to a façade of hope that time can never satisfy.
The flashbacks and references to night and day present elements of time that describe how characters are ceaselessly borne into the past. Fitzgerald writes of Gatsby, with his finite time and infinite dreams, he relinquishes his possibility of hope.
Works Consulted:
Fitzgerald, Scott. The Great Gatsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
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