Great Gatsbys Past & Mistakes about it Essay -- essays research papers

The Reason for the Past   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the words of Jan Gildewell, â€Å"You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest, that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.† Jay Gatsby in the book The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, didn’t only cling to the past and forget about the future but also tried to recreate it. There are symbols from Gatsby’s past that display his yearning for a different life all through this piece of literature. Gatsby’s mind can only conceive one way to change his current and undesired path of existence, and that single idea is to recreate and modify his past. In the act of trying to bring back the past he ends up dead. Before the book actually introduces Gatsby it shows a symbol of his desire to change what is history, although the reader doesn’t recognize it until the end of the book. That sacred idol is mentioned, but not noted, for the first time when Nick arrives home and sees Gatsby for the first time, a well dressed young man standing on his lawn and then it reads, â€Å"—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.†(Page 25-26) The next bit of significant history that can be found is the first of the many flashbacks that symbolize the precise moment Gatsby wants to relive. â€Å"When I came op...