The Great Gatsby

Time is one of the most pervasive themes in The Great Gatsby, weaving between characters and situations, slowing and speeding the action until the entire novel seems almost dreamlike. Fitzgerald not only manipulates time in the novel, he refers to time repeatedly to reinforce the idea that time is a driving force not only for the 1920s, a period of great change, but for America itself. We will see Fitzgerald also turns a critical eye to the American concept of time, in effect warning us all to avoid becoming trapped in time.

The Past

Fitzgerald strongly connects time in the novel with location, as if time were an entire setting in itself. Fitzgerald tips his hand early; after Nick provides a description of himself and what we assume are his motives in coming to New York, he makes an immediately important time reference:

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. (10)

Nick wants to relate the "history" of the summer, not its events, its characters, or "just" a story. This is to be a history, events frozen in time and examined and re-examined. Nick sets the stage for the novel's treatment of time - despite the often frivolous characters and situations, this story bears more than a superficial reading. The Eggs gain enough historical importance to rival New York City itself. Fitzgerald shrinks his focus to a geographical area while simultaneously expanding its meaning in time.

The past plays a major role, perhaps the most major role, in the concept of time presented in Gatsby. Tom was a "Big Man on Campus" in the past, while Gatsby was both a poor farm boy and Daisy's lover; Daisy was a flighty socialite with no family to tie her down; all of them were naпve Midwesterners whose lives, they now believe, were far better in a past they can't help but romanticize. It is precisely this romanticizing of the past that enables Fitzgerald to write such a powerful novel - in allowing his characters to wallow around in their pasts, he reminds later generations of readers that neither the 20s nor his books should be romanticized. They should be taken for what they are, and made relative to the present day. The (possibly unintentional) consequence of this attitude is an audience that extends beyond the 20th Century.

Characters

Fitzgerald's characters are not only obsessed with time, they seem to embody it. Tom Buchanan is obsessed with history, reading books like The Rise of the Colored Empires that offer historical explanations for his inability to rise above the life he lives. Tom is Old Money, hopelessly stuck in the past, trying to live up to his ancestors' wealth by amassing his own. He can never recapture his youth, so he seeks to recreate the excitement of those days by having a mistress on the side.

Daisy, too, is stuck in the past, a pre-feminist remnant of an age in which women were expected to act "a certain way." She tolerates Tom's affair, and stands out in stark contrast to Jordan Baker's contemporary "flapper" persona. Daisy is as confined as Jordan is liberated, and she can't live a life without a man to run it for her. Her true complication comes when two opposite aspects of her past - Tom and Gatsby - compete for her affection. In each, she sees qualities lacking in the other. For a woman who is defined by men, her own definition of herself comes into question.

Myrtle Wilson seems to have a fairly solid definition of herself, and she and her husband George are fully in the present. Living in the Valley of Ashes, they can't help but see the world as it is, as it goes by the windows of their garage. Myrtle is usually willing to put up with the complications of seeing a married man in exchange for the material possessions George can't give her. However, when she complains in her "secret" apartment in the city, the past literally smacks her in the face. Presumably, George would never do that to her, devoted as he is. That devotion, and the reality of his situation, causes George to snap at the end of the novel.

Gatsby, of course, the victim of George's misplaced rage, represents the future. His past is colorless and best forgotten; James Gatz got to where he is in the beginning of the novel by focusing on the future and building toward it, by any means necessary. He desperately wants to make Daisy part of his future (He is, after all, building it to share with her, which hopelessly entangles his past with his future), but she can't commit to his far-reaching vision. Gatsby's world falls apart when he realizes the future he envisions simply can't happen.

Nick's progression as a narrator provides a yardstick by which the other characters' relationships to time can be measured. In the beginning, he is purely a product of his Midwestern past; by the time he acclimates himself to New York and meets Myrtle Wilson, he is very much in the present. At the end of the novel Nick must reconcile his own future by returning to the site of his naпve