"On the last night, with my trunk packed and my car sold to the grocer, I went over and looked at that huge incoherent failure of a house once more. On the white steps an obscene word, scrawled by some boy with a piece of brick, stood out clearly in the moonlight, and I erased it, drawing my shoe raspingly along the stone"
This passage immediately draws the reader to the symbol of Gatsby's mansion, which is an objective correlative for Gatsby. With the use of the pre-modifying adjectives "huge incoherent failure" to describe the house, Nick Carrawy sees Gatsby's dream and desire of having Daisy love him as a failure.
The white steps that are described at the front on the house can represent Daisy, which is the colour the symbolises her. The fact that the front steps are white are explaining that all of Gatsby's work for wealth and social signifiance was all for her. The fact that the white steps have been graffitied on with an "obscene word" is paradoxical to the innocence and purity of the white steps. Also, because the "some boy" graffitied on Gatsby's house, this is meaning that the memory and legacy of Gatsby is being de-faced, misjudged and changing the story how he left it.
The importance of the moonlight shows the difference between the natural world and the moderised world of technology. Before Gatsby's death, his life was surrounded by lights such as the "green light" at the end of Daisy's dock and the lights of Gatsby's parties. All this artifical light was turned off when Gatsby died, and only the natural "moonlight" is remaining, which sheads light on the truth. This idea is seen later in the passage when the "Dutch-sailors" first came to America on the search for the American dream, the only light was the natural light of the moonlight, rather than the light that came from the modernising America.
The moonlight can also represent the desolation, as the lights from Gatsby's parties have faded away.
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