The importance of the automobile in the Great GatsbyF. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby was written about a time of joy for a certain group of people. One of the main thematic aspects of the book is driving and the automobile. By the time the book was written, the car had begun to become a national institution. This is evident in one of the book's central events. Tom's infidelity first comes to light in a car accident in Santa Barbara. He gets the wrong car and the wrong direction of his life becomes evident. The automobile influenced Fitzgerald and influenced the writing of The Great Gatsby. Driving is equated to living. Nick Carraway, describing their ill-fated journey from New York in chapter seven of The Great Gatsby, says, "...we went on to death..." (143) This is both literal and metaphorical. They were heading towards the horrific scene of Myrtle's death. The entire novel is about life, which is a movement towards death. Driving becomes a metaphor for living. Automobile transportation becomes the rhetoric to describe everything. Nature is also linked to cars. Nick describes the season in terms of elements associated with cars. “It was already high summer on the roofs of the inns and in front of the roadside garages where new red gas pumps sat in pools of light…” (25). For these people, driving represents the new way to move quickly and live life to the full. No one is exempt from being touched by the influence of automobiles. Fitzgerald incorporates the automotive metaphor into every aspect of his novel. This is especially evident when Fitzgerald describes people. Often the basic terminology used is related to the automotive sector. Daisy describes Tom as a "big, fat physical specimen... middle of paper... ed" who draws on the metaphor of the automobile. It's the hit-and-run lifestyle that makes The Great Gatsby such a wonderful book, and Fitzgerald's continued use of automobiles helps maintain a vivid image of it. Works Cited Berman, Ronald. The Great Gatsby and modern times. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1994.Dillon, Andrew. “The Great Gatsby: The Vitality of Illusion.” Arizona Quarterly 44.1 (1988): 49-61. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York. New York.: Scribner., 1995. Godden, Richard. "The Great Gatsby: Glamor on the Edge." Journal of American Studies 16.3 (1982): 343-371. Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963. Trilling, Lionel. “F. Scott Fitzgerald.” Critical essays on Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". Ed. Scott Donaldson. Boston: Hall, 1984. 13-20.