Great Gatsby?

Question

Can some provide me a brief explanation what this quote means in the Great Gatsby in Chapter 5:

“Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy is had seemed very near to her almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock…possible it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of hat light had now vanished forever.” Pg. 98

In this scene Gatsby meets Daisy for the first time.... I have to find what is symbolic about this scene.

Answer 1

The green light is a multi-meaning symbol. It lures him like Daisy, it brings him close, draws him in, but his hopes get ruined (and ultimately, this cool realist sacrifices his life because of a mistake about Daisy).

At the other level, GG was perceived as an early date as the Great American Novel, the novel that symbolized the American experience in World War I (though unlike his contemporary, Hemingway, Fitzgerald did not deal directly with the disillusionment of that war that set in only shortly after it came to an end). America is seen as being lured into disasters because it sets aside its native shrewdness and lets its ideals take over, breeding delusions as to how near one can come to achieving one's hearts desire in the cruel world of realpolitic.

The three great novelists of the 1920s — Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and the early Faulkner (plus a more explicitly political novelist, Dos Passos, who began in the 1920s but flourished in the 1930s, captured the disillusionment of the "Lost Generation" that had been shaped by serving in World War I. The tremendous impact they had was one of the things that led Americans to turn their back on participation in internaitonal affairs until they realized that dangers really did exist, and there was a purpose in standing for democracy against the totalitarian challenges of the 1930s and 1940s.

Answer 2

um....im not sure i can explain the quote but i can explain the situation. gatsby was in love with daisy and then went off to war, but then he found her again and bought a house across the water from her's and he would look at her green light from across the water and think of her. and he throws all of those awesome parties, hoping she'll show up sometime. he hasn't got the courage to go talk to her yet....so he stares at her light from across the water...