BE Chap 15....groping Read; groping for elusive possible associations

[Mark Kohut]

P 169   "and for maybe a minute and a half she feels free----at least on
the edge of possibilities, like whatever the Europeans who first sailed up
the Passaic River must have felt......

"In the book’s final pages, Nick ties his story of Gatsby to the idea of the
 American Dream
<https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gatsby/quotes/theme/the-american-dream/>, a
notion that Nick imagines was born when Dutch sailors first arrived in the
place that would become New York. Nick recreates the historical moment of
discovery: “I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for
Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished
trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in
whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams...” The Dutch both
literally and figuratively cleared the way for Gatsby. Not only did they
cut down the trees where his house would later be built, but in doing so
they also laid the foundations for a “new world” that would later become
the United States of America.


“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year
recedes before us.