F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby reflects Fitzgerald’s growing awareness of moral
decay within American society in the 1920s. This depiction of moral decay is told through the
narrative of a memory of events, often colored in nostalgia and longing. Fitzgerald uses water
imagery, particularly tears, rain and bodies of water to reflect aspects of this moral decay.
Among the major characters portrayed in The Great Gatsby, Daisy, Tom Buchanan, Mr.
Harry Gatsby and Mr. Wolfshiem all shed tears at some point in the story. The anonymous
chorus singer, however, sheds tears that perhaps illustrate, more than others; the nature and
extent of this thematic moral decay. The singer, from a “famous chorus” performing at one of
Jay Gatsby’s infamous parties, sings everything sadly, so much so that “she was not only
singing, she was weeping too.”( 51) As she sings and weeps, “the tears coursed down her cheeks
- not freely, however, for when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they
assumed an inky color, and pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets.” (51) Her tears
cannot flow freely, as they are impeded by and later comingled with her make-up, those “heavily
beaded eyelashes.”(51) This water image of tears projects her sadness, loneliness and emotional
instability blocked by the artifice, fakeness and disguise of her mascara. This water image is one
of tears turning to a black river of sludge, such as with water when added to the valley of ashes
that divides West Egg and East Egg itself. Moral decay depicted here suggests that the human,
emotional response to moral decay, impeded by our desires to mask our true selves through
cosmetics, are doomed to drown, and empty into the fakeness, artificiality and isolation of the
times.
Fitzgerald uses the water imagery of rain to suggest Nature’s response to this moral
decay. It is not until Gatsby is dead that the rain begins to fall (after a long, hot, dry summer),
especially noticeable during Gatsby’s funeral and burial services. Both the minister and the “owl-
eyed” man react uncharacteristically to the falling, pouring rain. The minister’s “eyes began to
blink anxiously, and he spoke of the rain in a worried, uncertain way.” (174) The minister, under
the cloth of God, knows that the rain portends to the inevitable, that no one is coming to attend
the services, that any sympathy or forgiveness is not forthcoming. The “owl-eyed man,” perhaps
the one character in the novel who sees most clearly, has his sight obscured by this rain, as when
“the rain poured down his thick glasses, and he took them off and wiped them to see the
protecting canvas unrolled from Gatsby's grave.” (175) The rain frightens the minister and blinds
the owl-eyed man. The water image of rain, as it blankets death, projects the stern response from
nature, a rebuke toward moral decay and those that abide in it.
Fitzgerald uses water imagery as found in bodies of water to illustrate the cycle and
circuit of Gatsby’s own moral decay. Gatsby began his life as a fisherman, drawing his
sustenance from the lake, much in the symbolism of a disciple. “For over a year,”(98) Carraway
explains, “he had been beating his way along the south shore of Lake Superior as a clam-digger
and a salmon-fisher or in any other capacity that brought him food and bed.” (98) Gatsby sets out
in life with both humility and an honest work ethic. Ironically, Gatsby dies, assassinated in a
swimming pool, a man-made body of water built purely for recreation and self-indulgence, in a
body of water Gatsby had not “made use of…all summer." (82) Gatsby’s own moral decline is
mirrored in this contrast between the physical place of his beginning and ending.
Fitzgerald employs water imagery expressed in tears, rain and bodies of water to illustrate
and chronicle the moral decay implicit in the novel. The tears reflect the human response, the
rain reflects nature’s response, and the pool reflects the cycle and circuit one man’s start and end
in that journey into moral decay. Perhaps Fitzgerald equates water, from which all life depends
and is sustained, with our own moral choosings.