Evidence Record

Evidence summary

Nick's retrospective narration controls access to Gatsby, while repeated objects and scenes acquire revised significance across the novel. Late synthesis binds individual longing to class, time, and national self-making.

Claim and interpretation

Supports symbolic convergence as a long-form pattern. The observation concerns recurrence and information order; any claim about reader effect is a hypothesis.

Provenance and limits

Project Gutenberg transcription of the 1925 novel. One novel cannot establish a stable Fitzgerald style; narrator unreliability and symbolism remain interpretively contested.

Counterevidence

The novel also uses direct scene, dialogue, exposition, and explicit judgment; it is not reducible to symbols.