Significant Connections

Time is always moving forwards. It is unchangeable. Time is seen to be something that has control and power over our lives. No matter what happens it always moves forwards and brings new opportunities and experiences with it. With new opportunities and experiences, it can also bring up past mistakes and things that have been lost. F. Scott Fitzgerald brings this idea to life in his stories ‘The Great Gatsby’, ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’, ‘Winter Dreams’ and ‘The Lost Decade’. Through each of the male protagonists and their lives in these stories, Fitzgerald conveys his idea of time and how much of a part it plays in every single persons life.

Jay Gatsby is seen to have everything anyone could ever want, with all the wealth in the world, but to him he is missing the only thing that is important to him, the only reason he got to where he is now. Daisy. The golden girl. “[Gatsby talked a lot about the past, and [Nick] gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.” Gatsby misses this idea and mourns for the time that he once spent with her. Gatsby truely believes that he is able to relive the past and have what he had with Daisy once again. Throughout the novel ‘The Great Gatsby’, he is convinced he can relive their past together and is intent on turning back time to when when they were together. Through all of his wild attempts to make Daisy fall back in love with him, he is just trying to regain the time that he lost with her and the five years that they spent apart. Gatsby tries to fight time so that he can always be with Daisy like he used to be, but he was unable to, so him and Nick “beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” They always pondered on the past and what had been and weren’t able to live in the now because Gatsby was so stuck in what happened in the past and trying to bring it back. By using Gatsby as he tries to repeat the past, Fitzgerald show us that no matter what, time will always move forwards and it does not change for anyone. Even though Gatsby replies to Nicks comment with “you can’t repeat the past?… Why of course you can!” you cannot repeat the past or turn back time and this is proved throughout The Great Gatsby.

Like Gatsby, Benjamin Button wanted nothing more than to have more time with the one he loves, Daisy, but instead of wanting to turn back time, Benjamin wants time to go forwards. He wants to age forwards like normal so that he can live his life with Daisy. Benjamin Button “was born under unusual circumstances. While everyone else was agin’ [he] was gettin’ younger… all alone.” Everyone sees him as different, but throughout the story, Fitzgerald uses Benjamins life to show that even though he was different and thinks he is alone, he still experiences life in the same chronological order as everyone else and that time is not effected by people’s lives. He is doing everything he would have done if he aged like everyone else. In the film, Fitzgerald displays that no matter what, time always moves forwards. It does not bend or change for anyone. Everyone still experiences things in the same order, but in their own way and still lead different lives. Throughout the film, Daisy and Benjamin come to realise that “some things last forever.” They realise that even though they are both ageing in different directions, they still love each other just as much and time cannot change that. Unlike this, in The Great Gatsby, over time, even though Gatsby will always love Daisy, it is revealed in the end that she does not love him as she once did and it was time that they lost that came between them. As Benjamin becomes younger and Daisy gets older they realise that time will keep moving forwards and they will keep ageing, Benjamin “thinks, right there and then, [Daisy] realised none of us is perfect forever. ” Through the use of Benjamin and his ageing backwards, Fitzgerald tells us that you cannot make time do what you want it to do, so you must embrace it and live your life as it is meant to be and “our lives are defined by opportunities, even ones we miss.” Benjamin realises that “for what it’s worth: it’s never to late or, in [his] case, to early to be whoever you want to be. There is no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same.”

In the text, ‘Winter Dreams’, Dexter, like Benjamin, in the end comes to realise that no one is perfect forever. People age and even though they are the same on the inside, to everyone else, they have changed. Time changes people and even though you don’t notice, things change. In Winter Dreams, Dexter starts out as the best caddy there is. Later in his life he becomes one of the golfers that he used to caddy for. Judy Jones is the girl that he loves. When Dexter comes back as a rich man, he finds out that Judy is married. When he finally realises this and that he can’t have her, he tries to relive his past with her, just like Gatsby did with Daisy, because “his dream was gone. Something had been taken from him. In a sort of panic he pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes and tried to bring up a picture of the waters lapping on Sherry Island… and her mouth damp to her kisses… these things were no longer in the world. They had existed and they exist no longer.” He tries to relive everything he did with her but then realises that they no longer exist and he can’t have them again. When Dexter says “long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone,” he is realising that he once had the chance to be with Judy and he had hope that he could be, but now that she is married, he can’t have her. When Dexter comes back, and Judy is married, people say that she is just ‘alright’ and not as beautiful as she once was. This pushes Dexter to realise that no one is perfect forever and nothing stays the same. Fitzgerald is trying to get us to realise that time changes things and people.

The fact that time changes things in life is brought back up in Fitzgeralds short story ‘the Lost Decade’. As time passes, things become different even if you aren’t aware of it. In the Lost Decade, “Mr Trimble’s been away a long time. Or he feels it’s a long time.” Mr Trimble spent the last ten years drunk. He missed out on everything that had happened. Like Nick says in the Great Gatsby “[he] was within and without”, Mr Trimble is alive and in the world, but he was not really there. He is just watching and not really taking anything in so it was like everything he did, he didn’t really do. When Mr Trimble say he wants “to see how people walk and what their clothes and shoes and hats are made of. And their eyes and their hands” and then proceeds to ask Orrison to shake his hand, he is trying to relive what he once did before he was drunk so that he can experience it all again. Fitzgerald is trying to tell us that if you lose time, you will try to get it back and do the things you missed. When Mr Trimble was drunk, he saw all of this but to him, he didn’t feel like he did so he wants to redo everything and regain what he lost in the ten years that he was drunk. When they are walking around the city, Mr Trimble sees all of the buildings and realises how much time has actually passed and that time has changed things. After Mr Trimble misses those ten years, he tries to do everything again but he can’t because time has changed these things and things aren’t the same as what they used to be.

In each of these stories written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, he presents the idea of time and how it always moves forwards and can’t be changed or regained and that the past is the past. Gatsby wants time to go back, Benjamin wants time to go forwards in a sense, Dexter realises that time moves on and changes things and Mr Trimble realises time changes things even if you aren’t aware of it, and one day, you will really take a look at things years later and see how different these things really are. No one can change the course of time and whatever happens cannot be undone. Time changes things and they cannot be brought back because time does not bend or change. Time always moves forwards.