Time in The Great Gatsby
Although one of the most eloquently written and creatively plotted novels of the century, The Great Gatsby is filled with characters discontented and restless in their own lives. The characters in The Great Gatsby are unable to achieve fulfillment in their lives because they live without any regard to the present moment as they dwell constantly in the past and dread the future.
Throughout the novel, the characters in The Great Gatsby display a negative attitude towards the passage of time and the future. Nick Carraway, in particular, appears despondent in regards to the passage of time and growing older. After recalling that his birthday has passed without the slightest notice, Nick dejectedly notes that he is “thirty. Before [him] stretched the portentous menacing road of a new decade.”(Fitzgerald, 243). Revealing his pessimistic attitude, Nick assumes that the next decade of his life will be both pretentious and intimidating. His attitude grows more ominous as he continues to predict “ a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.” (Fitzgerald, 144) Despite his perfectly respectable position in life, Nick still feels hopeless at the prospect of the future. According to his prediction, all Nick has left to look forward to is a “thinning” of his happiness and well-being. This state of mind veritably demonstrates that Nick is not happy with his position in life for he dwells, not on the present, but on the future and the past. Similarly, Daisy is unable to satiate herself because she remains restless about the future and unsettled about the past. Lying idly in the heat of a summer day, Daisy ponders “’What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?’ . . . ‘and the day after that, and the next thirty years.’” (Fitzgerald, 125) Daisy is completely discontented with the present and panics herself into thinking about the instability of the future. Her unhappiness comes, in part, from the fact that she had been happy in her past and is afraid that she may never attain that stage of contentment again. Overall, the majority of characters in The Great Gatsby have difficulty attaining any measure of satisfaction for they worry what the future holds.
Jay Gatsby, like Nick Carraway and Daisy Buchanan, remains dissatisfied throughout the novel because he dwells in the memories of the past. When Gatsby finally achieves his ultimate goal of rekindling his relationship with Daisy, Nick advises him to not “ask too much of her . . . You can’t repeat the past” to which Gatsby responds, stunned, “’Can’t repeat the past’ . . . ‘Why of course you can!’” (Fitzgerald, 116). Clearly, Gatsby is disillusioned in that he plans to re-create his past with Daisy. Obviously, things have changed between the two of them and the situation in which they have been reunited is not conducive to furthering a relationship. In addition, Gatsby finds his internal vision of Daisy to be something far more mesmerizing than the concrete Daisy. Nick notices, “ 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” and realizes that “there must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his disillusion.” (Fitzgerald, 163). Gatsby, at this moment, realizes, although subconsciously, that Daisy is not the key to his happiness for she does not possess the same qualities she used to or the qualities that will even fulfill his vision. By this point, Gatsby’s disillusionment has become so “colossal” that Daisy could not come close to matching up with Gatsby’s imagination. Therefore, the shortcomings of Daisy in Gatsby’s mind prove that, by living in the past, Gatsby has prevented himself from ever achieving satisfaction. Gatsby finally realizes that he “had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.” (Fitzgerald, 161) By failing to legitimately get to know the present version of Daisy and relinquishing his old memories of her, Gatsby prevents himself from finding meaning in his life and from achieving happiness.
In his analysis of The Great Gatsby, Ronald Bergman, prolific Gatsby critic, supports the supposition that time is irrelevant and disproportionate in the minds of the characters. Over the years, critics have cited the narration by Nick Carraway as a vital element of the plotline and the reader’s view of all the characters. Throughout the novel “the reader’s sense of time and place is affected also by the way that Nick states his own perceptions and restates the dialogue he remembers.” (Bergman, 3) Fitzgerald uses Nick as the medium to display his perspectives, but, in that same way, Nick’s views are also subject to variables such as memory, bias, or lack of information. In addition, Nick’s sense of time is transposed to the reader. Bergman also sustains that the novel does not “locate us in a chronology of act and experience. Instead, [it implies] a kind of double vision. It is easy to see that for Gatsby present and past are undifferentiated.” (Bergman, 3) The word undifferentiated implies that Gatsby is so wrapped up in his past that he cannot distinguish between the present and the past. Eventually, this inability to separate the present from the past leads to Gatsby’s unhappiness and, later, ultimate demise.
Contrary to the characters of The Great Gatsby, Benjamin seems securely fastened in the reality of time and lives for the present moment. While Daisy and Nick wonder about and dread the future and what it holds for them, Franklin defies this contention and lives directly for the present and does not worry about the future for he knows his hard work will sustain him. He also regards time as precious, while the characters in The Great Gatsby squander time and take an apathetic view towards it.
In his autobiography, Franklin advises “But dost though love Life, then do not squander Time for that’s the stuff that life is made of.” (Franklin, 176). In calling time “the stuff that life is made of”, Franklin reveals how preciously he regards his time. Franklin does not worry about thirty years from now because he is so intent upon living each moment to its maximum potential. Franklin also appears to be a realist in regards to time when he says “Lost Time is never found again; and what we call Time-enough, always proves little enough.” (Franklin, 176) Unlike Gatsby, Franklin realizes that the past is in the past and that once you waste a moment it is wasted forever and can never be relived. By describing time as “little enough”, Franklin also reveals that he knows time is valuable and in short supply, which implies that he lives every moment to its fullest extent. In this method of living, Franklin achieves his own measure of happiness.
One thing evidenced from this novel is that one cannot be happy if they are to dwell in the past. Living in the present without qualms about the past our doubts for the future, is the only way for any person to achieve contentment.
Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Collier Books , 1992.
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003.
Berman, Ronald. The Great Gatsby and Modern Times. Chicago: University of Illinois Press , 1994.
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"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon?" cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"
"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."
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― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Read more quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald
‘What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?’ cried Daisy, ‘and the day after that, and the next thirty years?’
‘Don’t be morbid,’ Jordan said. ‘Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.’
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby. Chapter 7, to Daisy life is a never-ending round of boredom that ends in death. To Jordan it is a constant cycle of renewal.