The Great Gatsby Theme of Memory and The Past

The Great Gatsby deals at great length with issues of the past, present, and future. In love with a girl of the past, Gatsby is unable to have her again in the present. He wants a future with her, but only if she will lie to erase the marriage in her past. The narrator indicates in the final lines of the text that nobody can ever reach the future – it is a beacon of light that calls to us, but even as we try to reach it, we are beaten back into the past. The manipulation of time in the narrative adds to this theme. Nick tells the whole tale with a tone of nostalgia – beginning the text with mention of his father’s advice to him in his youth.

1. Nick Carraway suggests that the future is always receding in front of us, and that we are forever beaten back towards the past. Is the future attainable in The Great Gatsby?
2. Nick tells Gatsby that "you can’t repeat the past," yet chapters later he insists we are constantly "borne back" into it. Did he change his mind, or are these two different ways of saying the same thing?
3. Is the past remembered realistically? Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan alike think nostalgically about the past, but are they ever able to confront reality?
4. Is Gatsby driven by his memory of the past or his dream for the future? Is there a difference?
5. What are Nick’s visions of his own future?

Gatsby ends up dead because of his inability to live in the present.

Daisy, unlike Gatsby, is ultimately able to face reality and live in the present.