The circumstances that surround Gatsby’s death create a sense of symmetry between the life in pursuit of the American dream and the inevitability of death, which brings an end to something as limitless as success. Like the meretricious grandeur that dictated Gatsby’s life and the perception that people built up of him, the way in which Gatsby died , the visual spectacle of his dead body floating along his private swimming pool, downplays the emotion usually associated with a death, and competes to overtake the decease of such a characterless individual. It provides a near-perfect mirror image to Gatsby’s life; the extravagance and outlandish parties that became his social image were always there to overshadow him as a character, and the same thing has happened to him in his death.
The death of Gatsby itself, and the literal circumstances of his physical surroundings are a representation of the limitedness that come with materialistic values of pursuing the American Dream. The typical phrase of “you can’t take it with you” is played upon with in the setting of Gatsby’s death, as he was shot in the pool that he never swam in, and now he has literally taken the pool with him to his death; the clarity of the water - and meretriciousness of its purity when contained in such an extravagant vessel as a swimming pool - has been contaminated with his blood, which is the purest physical embodiment of life and the loss of life itself. The swimming pool provides a representation of Gatsby’s life; a metaphor of how one can take something as simple as plain as water, place it in a vessel of such extravagance as a swimming pool, and watch it become a spectacle that is larger than life.
Of all the imagery and symbolism that Scott Fitzgerald (easily one of my favourite authors) creates in The Great Gatsby, it was the scene of Gatsby's death that I found the most poignant, and haunted me in a most perennial fashion. It seems that I am one of the few to prefer analysis to creation in a lot of areas, English literature being no exception. Here is my interpretation of the death, written almost a year ago I believe. I haven't edited the content of this, but I do disagree with myself on the idea that he was "characterless".
