"...his dream must seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him...Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther...And one fine morning----So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" (Fitzgerald 180).
The green light, to Gatsby, was Daisy, who was everything he wanted to be in life--the perfect match for the perfect Jay Gatsby. Everything Daisy had wanted prior to Tom, Gatsby became, and that was the Daisy that he treasured and held onto, despite all the changes she had undergone during those years of separation and the lavish, tasteful life she currently enjoyed with Tom as an "old money" power couple, yet Gatsby continued to believe that he could be all that and more because of their love. Their current experiences disappointed him in his ever-hungering thirst for her love, so he continued to travel back in time, back to a time when he was her lover, to a time when he could recover himself, "...I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was..."; he wanted to recover every part of himself that he had lost loving her and never letting go of that same girl he loved five years ago (Fitzgerald 110). Fitzgerald paints Daisy also as the general unattainable goal because she is never fully obtained; she sits right in between Tom and Gatsby, technically one of Tom's possessions, but not really his, as she gives herself away to Nick and Gatsby in different ways. Her voice is described to draw men in, that it is "...full of money--that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it...High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl..."; it tempts men into what they want most--it is the embodiment of the American Dream--and each man got a different part of the "American Dream": Gatsby received infinite hope, Nick was tempted, but was the one character who denied it, and Tom received reputation (Fitzgerald 120). By using her voice as a seduction tool among men, Fitzgerald is able to symbolize the seductive appeal of the American Dream that can never fully be reached. Almost every male character in the novel sought some sort of approval or love from Daisy, wanting to gain her to fill a part of their dream, but never fully gaining her love or attention; Nick, however, takes his eyes off her and by disowning her completely, is able to clearly see the rotten corruption in the American Dream, finding happiness in his situation that no other character finds. Fitzgerald, through the broken dreams and unattainable goals of his characters in the Great Gatsby, is able to convey that the American Dream is now a corrupt fantasy that is far out of reach and that happiness comes when one finds contentment in the honest life they live.
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