The last sentence of The Great Gatsby is maybe the most lovely and haunting conclusion in all of American literature: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Within it, Fitzgerald boils down the old, familiar striving of the human heart to move forward, even as history, memory, and loss pull us backward. Gatsby’s story is the most overt articulation of this theme. He fights against the very nature of time, believing he can recreate the past with Daisy and reclaim a former self. But the tide of reality in the form of social class, time, and truth ultimately overwhelms his dream. This is a sentence that makes Gatsby’s personal tragedy universal, one that we all must suffer. We all chase dreams, usually built in the past, wanting to continue carrying what we carry with us. The image of boats pulling against a tide evokes a despairing immobility, but a kind of strength as well. In defeat, there is honour in the trying. Nick’s account here is philosophical, pastoral, and reflective. He knows the beauty and the pathos of Gatsby’s dream, and of the dreams of all those willing to reach beyond what is possible. Fitzgerald sums up the novel’s themes of ambition, illusion, and the American way in a sentence or two. We’re all boats, being carried along on currents we can’t control, and hoping that if we row hard enough, we’ll wind up someplace other than where we started.