the great gatsby

Desire is never satisfied. When Fitzgerald labels the houses "inessential" his word choice almost seems to imply that the houses are of no use, as anything desired and retrieved is then less wanted obviously, and thus becomes eventually undesirable and "inessential" as this is the nature of desire. He also says the "old island..flowered once.." describing America as once beautiful when it was desired but then when the desire vanished upon the retrieving of it, America must have grown...stale. This is also implied when he says America when desired was a "fresh green breast"- a metaphor that could mean both that the breast was like youth to grow old when was it retrieved and also the desire for America was as empty as the desire for lust, which is notoriously empty since such a desire can never really be eternally satisfied. Fitzgerald also said "his dream must have seemed so close..He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in the vast obscurity behind the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled under the night" which seems to say that dreams can never be achieved as desire is truly never satisfied and that obscurity is the emptiness of desire thus. Also, the dark fields of the republic rolling under the night was the desire for America being obfuscated and ultimately discintigrated by the darkness of the emptiness of desire. The "orgastic future..reced[ing] us" is making the future-the goal to satisfy desire-equivalent to a sexual encounter, in which a climax is followed by what? The satisfaction is fleeting and never tangible enough to be true, and so the future, the satisfaction, must inevitably discintigrate as any pleasure of attaining the desire must. "It eluded us then, but that's no matter- to-morrow we will run faster, stretch our arms farther....And we beat on, boats against the currenty, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Desire always breeds a useless hope as is described by the wishing that if efforts are just greater, so shall be the satisfaction. But truly, trying to obtain the satisfaction is as useless as trying to swim against the current.