Ships to Boats, What a Future

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." 

The last page serves to expand the novel in perspective and to ask a bigger question of human purpose. Dutch ancestors had gazed upon the untouched land and its infinite possibilities as the "last and greatest of all human dreams". To say the last dream had been dreamt, is a depressive statement, a statement which solidifies that we descendants are in a post-dream world. Our ambitions can never match those of they who come before us, the gods who have made this world, and made it for us. The question then becomes of what is the purpose of human life, of the parties, and the desire for Daisy's hand, of the refreshing dip in the pool.

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us."

Fitzgerald suggests that the green light represented, to Gatsby, a future of happiness. People of the lower class reach higher for the wealth, because they believe wealth will create them into happy people. Gatsby reached for the object of his desires from his youth, because he believed that arm in arm, Daisy will create him into a happy person. The Dutch reached the fresh, green New World, and believed it will create them into ...

Life is short. The sun smiles as we struggle on our boat, season after season. We patch up our boat, pail back some uninvited waters, and bring out the duct tape. But the boat is short. We see around us bigger boats and shinier tape, but we don't realize that someone else, somewhere is eyeing your boat.