Best Quote From the Great Gatsby

The best quote from The Great Gatsby is from the end of the book about the green light that Gatsby watched on that night. “Gatsby believed in the greenlight, 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”(Fitzgerald 180). This highlights the significance of pursuing the past. It was a big theme throughout The Great Gatsby. Gatsby was trying to regain his past by coming to New York. He looked at the green light across the bay as if it were a star in the night sky. And just like stars, Daisy was unattainable and too far to reach. He failed to recreate the past and anyone who tries to do the same will fail as well and Nick recognizes that. That’s why he talks about the future instead of the past and that we must stretch out our arms toward the future. The green light represents the distant past. We love to fantasize about the past and how great the “good old days” were, but it is always important to look forward and let things go. Gatsby would not be able to marry the Daisy that he knew when he was young because she doesn't even exist. That is why the past is unattainable. People change and Gatsby shows this struggle by begging Daisy to say that she never loved Tom. Gatsby’s obsession for the past blinded his awareness and he only brought about more pain. Nick also recognizes that innately we humans all fantasize about our past and he writes the last sentence of the book stating that “we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”(Fitzgerald 180).