Blog #25 The Great Gatsby

The last line in The Great Gatsby, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” is significant because it represents the ongoing concept of how Jay Gatsby struggles to live in the past and make his dream of being with Daisy, like they were back then, come true. Most of the book, The Great Gatsby was focused mainly on Gatsby's desire and love for Daisy Buchanan. To Gatsby, Daisy is the love that he lost, and can’t get back, when he went to war but now she is married. Throughout the book everything that Gatsby does is to try and capture the attention of Daisy in hopes that he could get her back. “He revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes.” This quote proves that his house, everything he buys, and the parties he holds are ways that Gatsby uses to impress Daisy, which doesn't seem logical being she is rich too and she can just do the same things and get what ever she wants without Gatsby.

I think that "so we beat on", can be represented like how someone just moves on in life and look towards the future. The boats would represent Gatsby in that he keeps looking back in the past and doesn't look in the present or towards the future but just the past and the time he had with Daisy. The current, mentioned in the last line of the book, represents how a current has an endless flow and only goes in one direction, Gatsby is also going in one direction, the past, he doesn't try to go a different direction, the present and the future, but just keeps going in the same direction he wants to, the past. "borne back ceaselessly into the past" this represents how Gatsby is focused on keeping everything the same as they were in the past and ceaselessly could represent how he wished that time would just stay in that period of time in the past when Daisy was his so she could always be his and he never would have lost her. Ceaselessly we try to move forwards in our minds but it is the exact opposite for Gatsby he wants to move forward but in the past meaning that he wants to move forward with Daisy and have everything be the way it was in the past when it was just the two of them.

The last line is not only referring to Jay Gatsby but society as a whole because it states "So we beat on, boats against the current" where we represents more than one person. So if it were referring to society as a whole the boat would symbolize all of the character and each of their journey’s throughout the book, the wave would represent the problems and there materialist mind that the characters faced throughout the book. But seeing how Gatsby instead of just living in the moment and getting on with his life he tries to live as if he was still in the past in that one time where he was with his love. He wanted to stay in the past so that he could keep working on getting back the love of his life and so that they could be together again and he wanted it to be where he could marry her like he wanted to before he left for war. So therefore the last line in the book is mainly referring to Jay Gatsby and how he is stuck in the past and his life with Daisy.

Jay Gatsby was actually a fictional ideal character created by James Gatz. Gatsby had changed his name and started portraying the role of the person he wanted to be except for the fact that he doesn't stop acting he just continues to play the role he made up when he was younger for the rest of his life. Even though he is acting like someone who clearly isn't really him yet he still continues to do it because he tries to maintain the past idea or image of himself.