F. Scott Fitzgerald was a master of atmosphere in addition to character and conversation. The weather is more than just background scenery in The Great Gatsby. The weather is emotional. It captures the conflict, and ultimate disintegration of the protagonists and their meticulously planned lives. The weather, from heat to foggy evenings, greatly influences the tone and meaning of the narrative. The confrontation between Gatsby and Tom at the Plaza Hotel. Everyone is melting, the sun is burning, and the air is heavy. According to Fitzgerald, “the day was broiling,” and the tension is equally intolerable. Secrets are revealed, emotions are erupting, and Gatsby’s dream starts to fall apart. The building conflict can no longer be contained by the heat, which reflects the emotional strain, and something will inevitably blow up. Weather foreshadows significant changes in the book at other points as well. It’s pouring when Gatsby and Daisy get back together for the first time in five years. His nervousness, the awkwardness, and the uncertain conclusion of this long-awaited meeting are all reflected in the weather. However, as they reconnect, the rain stops and brightness replaces it. The shift in mood is reflected in the weather. Everything seems so full of possibilities for a time.We know it won’t last, of course. Seasonal changes are another way that Fitzgerald organizes the novel’s emotional arc. The summer, a season linked to vitality, passion, and life, is where the majority of the story takes place. However, summer becomes oppressive here. It is full of excess, deceit, and eventually devastation. Near the book’s conclusion, there is a discernible change as fall draws near. Things are cooling off both physically and symbolically, leaves are dropping, and Gatsby’s dream is withering. Autumn had arrived by the time Gatsby is slain. His desperate attempt to use the pool before it gets too cold turns into a sort of metaphor for his opposition to change. In order to preserve the summer and the dream, he want to stop time. The sense that the dream is gone and that winter, the season of emptiness and silence, is approaching is reinforced by his death during the cooling season. There is a reason even for the fog and mist that appear throughout the book. The mist obscures the green light at Daisy’s dock’s end as Gatsby glances at it. It serves as a visual representation of his dream. Beautiful, radiant, yet perpetually elusive. Even if The Great Gatsby is about money, love, and illusion, it’s also about the little things that affect our emotions and signal the passage of time, like rain, heat, and changing leaves.