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New Criticism
[W]hat gave [her house] an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there. . . . There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors, and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender, but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year’s shining motor cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. (155–56; ch. 8)
Because, in this passage, Gatsby dreams of a lifestyle that is largely unknown to him and seems unattainable, he idealizes it just as Daisy, Jordan, Nick, and Tom idealize their irretrievable youth. The phrases “breathless intensity,” “ripe mystery,” and “hint of bedrooms” create simultaneously an air of sensuality and a feeling that Gatsby is a little boy with his face pressed against the window of a candy store, longing for the sweets he sees displayed inside, which is, metaphori‑ cally, precisely what he is doing. The imagery here also creates a sense of fecun‑ dity, of a fruition so longed for that it seems about to happen, as we see in the words “ripe,” “radiant,” “fresh and breathing and redolent,” and “flowers.” In fact, such is the power of Gatsby’s longing that it can turn “motor cars” into natural objects: the romances that occur in Daisy’s house are “redolent”—that is, sweetsmelling, usually of flowers—of “this year’s shining motor cars.” It should be no surprise, then, that such a longing as this can disconnect itself from its human source and live on its own, as it does when Daisy withdraws from Gatsby during his confrontation with Tom in the New York hotel room: “only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room” (142; ch. 7). One of the more frequently noted images of Gatsby’s longing for future fulfill‑ ment is that of the protagonist standing alone on the beach before his Long Island mansion, “trembling” (26; ch. 1) under the “silver pepper of the stars” (25; ch. 1) with his arms outstretched toward the “single green light, minute and far away” (26; ch. 1) at the end of Daisy’s dock. This image recalls one discussed ear‑ lier: that of Gatsby in Louisville after Daisy’s departure, his hand outstretched toward his lost past. But this time, the image of Gatsby’s outstretched arms merges longing for the past with longing for the future, which, for him, have become one and the same: the fulfillment of his love for Daisy that he has come to Long Island to gain. The light at the end of her dock is green, carrying with it the hope of new beginnings that the green verdure of spring brings with it. And though the green light seems “minute and far away,” Gatsby is, paradoxi‑ cally, geographically and financially closer to Daisy than he has been since he lost her.
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