Sophia Wojcik

Ms Atkinson

ENG4U0

January 15 2024

A Sailor’s Elusive Quest to the American Dream

An Analysis of the Nautical Motif in The Great Gatsby

Joseph Conrad once said: “There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving

than the life at sea”. Water in all of its forms, represents the concepts of life, birth,

metamorphosis, an aspect of wisdom, and the abyss. The nautical motif in The Great Gatsby

reflects Gatsby's elusive quest for the American dream and his unresponsiveness to the reality

around him acting as a metaphor for a sailor's birth of journey and eventual loss of navigation at

sea.

Gatsby’s journey is first ignited by the blind hope gained in his metaphorical rebirth as a

sailor named Jay Gatsby, "It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that

afternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who

borrowed a rowboat, pulled to the Twolumne, and informed Cody that a wind might catch him

and break him up in a half an hour” (Fitzgerald 70). Representing money, status, and power, Dan

Cody was who Gatsby longed to become, Gatsby saw their encounter as his opportunity to be a

part of the high class society, "So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year

old boy would be likely to invent and to this conception he was faithful to the end.”(Fitzgerald

71) By recreating himself, a new persona is born and Gatsby teaches himself to live “rich”. He

mirrors the actions, decisions, and attitudes of the old money but only manages to secure an

artificial life which he lives ignorantly. “To the young Gatz, resting on his oars and looking up at
the railed deck, the yacht represented all the beauty and glamor in the world.” (Fitzgerald 72). To

Gatsby, the accumulation of extravagant materialistic goods are symbols of status and wealth,

thus the yacht being what Dan Cody owned, is the foundation for his predisposition on the

American Dream. The persona of Jay Gatsby corresponds to the metaphor of a sailor beginning a

new journey, a quest to explore unknown territory; it is to obtain and fulfill the unattainable

American dream.

With Gatsby's naivety and never-ending faith in his elusive dream, he develops an

indifferent and inattentive disposition towards the reality of his situation. “On the green Sound,

stagnant in the heat, one small sail crawled slowly toward the fresher sea. Gats- by’s eyes

followed it momentarily; he raised his hand and pointed across the bay.” (Fitzgerald 85). Gatsby

finds himself having to constantly remind others of his success to be acknowledged, yet his

attempts fail and only his passion for that hope in his mind pushes him to strive for what is

realistically unattainable. Gatsby's sense of navigation in his quest for success and recognition

starts to falter. “Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had

now vanished forever. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green

light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.”(Fitzgerald 67) Gatsby

fails to recognize he will never live the American Dream and only experience an illusion of it;

this leads him on a path of false hope. As a result, the green light is no longer a symbol of hope

but rather the beacon to the beginning of his loss in navigating himself to a successful life of self

fulfillment. In the end, the occurrence of Gatsby's death at the end of his quest, simultaneously

illustrates the inevitable loss and nothingness of his elusive dream, acting as a metaphor of the

sailors final loss of navigation in his journey: "There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of

the water as the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other”. (Fitzgerald
118) The emptiness in Gatsby's life is the result of his romanticization and obsession with the

American Dream. His materialistic lifestyle that consisted of throwing lavish parties, and

spending his wealth in great amounts was never enough, and only led him astray.

There are no moral values present in Gatsby, hence, his life had no value for he sought

for the impossible the aspiration to truly live the American Dream. “The touch of a cluster of

leaves revolved slowly, tracing, like the leg of compass, a thin red circle in the water. (Fitzgerald

118) Although Gatsby was able to change who he was, he is unable to escape the truth: he will

never be able to obtain the money, status, and power of the people of old money. His death was

an inevitable fate due to the act reflecting the finale of his journey: the loss in navigation. “He

had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could

hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that

vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the repub- lic rolled on under the night.”

(Fitgerald 132) The blue lawn that was supposedly the gateway to the American Dream, proved

to be a deception instead; Gatsby gained nothing and wasted many years of his life in an elusive

dream that only proved to have destructive consequences which lead to his death. The American

Dream was long corrupted with greed, illusions, and glamor, and Gatsby had failed to see that

due to his own childish desires.

Through the nautical motif in The Great Gatsby, Gatsby's elusive quest for the American

dream acts as a metaphor for a sailor's birth of a journey to his eventual loss of navigation at sea.

In both scenarios, the individual's loss of navigation, in order to chase an unattainable dream,

would develop an indifferent disposition to his reality around him, and death. The journey ends

abruptly, but the story of the deceased lost sailor continues to persist.