Symbolism in The Great Gatsby In The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald presents a novel with intricate symbolism. Fitzgerald integrates symbolism into the heart of the novel so strongly that you need to read the book multiple times to gain any level of understanding. The nuances and connotations that Fitzgerald gives to dialogue, settings and actions are one of the main reasons why The Great Gatsby is one of the classics of the 20th century. Three themes dominate the text of The Great Gatsby. They are time/loss, appearance/mutability, and perspective. Most of the novel's thematic structure fits neatly into one of these categories. To satisfactorily understand the novel, we must examine the roles of these three themes. The word time appears 450 times in the novel alone or in a compound word. Fitzgerald obviously wanted to emphasize the importance of time in the overall design of the book. Time is very important to Gatsby's character. Gatsby's relationship with time is an important aspect of the plot. He wants to erase five years not only from his life but also from Daisy's. Gatsby's response to Nick, telling him that he can repeat the past, is symbolic of the tragic irony behind Gatsby's fate. Gatsby exclaims on page 116, "Can't you repeat the past? Because of course you can!" Gatsby cannot accept Daisy until she erases the last three years of her life by telling Tom that she never loved him openly. Gatsby fully believes what he says and thinks (or desperately hopes) that this is true about Daisy. At one point in the story he tells Nick that as soon as Tom leaves the scene, he and Daisy will go to Memphis so they can get married in his white house just like five years earlier. In another scene, when Gatsby and Nick go to lunch with the Buchanans near the end of the book, Gatsby sees Daisy and Tom's son for the first time. Nick describes Gatsby's expression as one of genuine surprise and suggests that Gatsby had probably never believed in the girl's existence before. Gatsby is so caught up in his dream that he becomes vulnerable to the brutal reality of the world. Fitzgerald masterfully creates temporal symbolism in the scene where Daisy and Gatsby meet for the first time in five years..