The lovers represents alignment and harmony, Justice represents truth and consequences, and Strength represents courage and resilience. When it came to the consequence of the characters in The Great Gatsby, their actions, whether misaligned or aligned, and their reliance, whether faltering or strong, effected their overall outcome.
For example, Nick’s character is constantly unaligned. He thinks one thing and then when others pull him along he ends up doing the other. He has this constantly disconnect between his want and his actions through out the majority of the book, until the very end. It is not until after Gatsby’s death that we start to see Nick’s character start to realign himself with his wants, which took a lot of resilience to finally say ‘enough is enough’.
Although the true representation of strength, I would argue, within the whole book is Daisy. With every change in her life, she has always taken any feasible route that takes the most courage. (feasible because some may argue the most courageous act she could have done would be to marry for love regardless of the outcome, but theres a difference between courageous and reckless) When she was being courted she took a chance on Gatsby, when she say him leaving she had the courage to go after him, she had the courage to pick herself back up and plant a smile on her face, she had to courage to marry another for her future, she had the courage to bare a child, and she had the courage to trust in Gatsby when he returned. Although she should be prideful in all her strength, it’s not without consequence.
When Daisy sees her child is a girl, she cries for her. Daisy knows that if this little girl wants anything that isn’t expected of her it will cause her to fall into this pattern of great strength that Daisy had to endure. Resilience is only present with adversity, and she hopes that her daughter will come out a little fool so that she many never face adversity and never need to be resilient.
The Great Gatsby, overall shines a light of many forms of consequence. Tom, who was having an affair because he wanted more, ended up with less than what he stated with. He started with a wife he believed loved him, a mistress who gave everything he craved for at his beckon call, a house and a child, time to educate himself and indulge in his pleasure as his own leisure. However, by the end of the book, his mistress dies, her husband is on a rampage, his wife has murdered someone and he is now keenly aware that she does not love him in the way he had believed, and he doest have control over his circumstances to the extent he would want to. All of it come crumbling before him.
All must come into light, the lack of resilience and balance will aways lead to worse outcomes and The Great Gatsby speaks to this.
-lucid lamb