“Don’t be morbid,” Jordan said. “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”
This emphasizes two conflicting points of view between the characters in Gatsby—and the people of the boom-and-bust 1920s more generally. Some, like Gatsby and Daisy, have grandiose master plans and are always looking ahead toward something greater. But the more realistic characters, like Jordan and Nick, take everything day by day, season by season. This is an excellent example of the literary device called “foil”: the two sets of characters are foils, or contrasting types.
Traditionally in literature spring is symbolic of rebirth. Ironically Jordan refers to fall as the start of life, though in nature and literature fall is edging toward death, the “beginning of the end.”
Jordan is associated with autumn elsewhere in the novel as well; compare this phrase from Chapter IX, which takes place, not coincidentally, at the end of summer:
…her chin raised a little jauntily, her hair the color of an autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the fingerless glove on her knee.
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