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Geographical Areas In The Great Gatsby

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Different Area, Different People Geography plays an important role in establishing the characters in F. Scoot Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The characters actions, thoughts, and attitudes are based on their geographical division. The Great Gatsby is about a man who wants to complete his American dream by rekindling his love with a long lost friend. As he attempts to rekindle the love, the attitude and actions of other characters makes the dream fade away. The character’s personalities and actions derive from the different geographical divisions found in the story. The East Egg, West Egg, Mid-West, and Valley of Ashes are the different geographical divisions that give the characters their unique personalities. At the beginning of the story, …show more content…

Nick caraway is from the mid-west. He carries his moral values within him throughout his stay in New York. The mid- west is relatively fair and innocent. Nick reflects his mid-west values as he encounters ambiguous characters. His father told him to “remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had” (Fitzgerald 1). In the beginning of the story, Nick reveals how his mid-western family has install in him basic conservative values that need to be respected. As the story progresses, Nick is able to maintain his values, but is challenged because the people with him are immoral. Nick meets with Tom and Daisy who are cheaters and careless. Their attitude allows Nick to realize that he is “one of the few honest people” (Fitzgerald 59). Being honest and simple is characteristics of the mid-west. Because Nick is surrounded by immoral people, he has to remember where he comes from. The geographical division of the mid-west is reflected in Nick’s honesty and …show more content…

George and Myrtle Wilson both live in the Valley of Ashes. George’s character reflects the Valley of Ashes because he is desperate and empty. George continues to acquire Tom about the car he is planning to sale. George asks Tom, “When are you going to sell me that car?” (Fitzgerald 25). Obviously, George is desperate for the car because he needs the money. He only wants the money to make his wife happy. Sadly, Myrtle is cheating on him, revealing the moral decay of American society found in the Valley of Ashes. For Myrtle to cheat on her husband who loves her dearly, reveals how the Valley of Ashes has no moral values. Myrtle treats George poorly and uses Tom as an outlet to the rich and high class life. Myrtle tries to pretend to be something she is not. When Myrtle is with Tom, she tells him she wants a dog. Myrtle earnestly states, “I want to get one of those dogs…for the apartment” (Fitzgerald 27). Tom purchasing the dog is a way for Myrtle to feel detach from her hopeless life in the Valley of Ashes. Tom gives her a feeling of choice and freedom. The Valley of Ashes geographical division is home to people who are poor and

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In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece of literature “The Great Gatsby”, the eponymous character is shown to be an eccentric man with a shrouded past, which only becomes revealed to the reader in the final third portion of the book. Through his past, and many other subtleties laced into the book by Fitzgerald, it is heavily hinted at that Gatsby himself is African-American, being pale enough to pass as a white man in West Egg. The inklings of this idea are planted through this novel, both overt and symbolic, such as the geography laid out by Fitzgerald and characters’ placement in that, character interactions between Gatsby and harsh racists like Tom Buchanan, and Gatsby’s past that got him to West Egg and found him his fortune. Gatsby being black was a very hidden yet powerful statement by Fitzgerald on the upward mobility of African-Americans during the 1920’s when racism and racial violence were becoming extremely prevalent, and the lengths these people had to go to to achieve that mobility, with no guaranteed success.

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“Instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business” (Fitzgerald 16). Throughout the novel Nick sees rich people being careless, like Tom and Daisy, and poor people being exploited, like Myrtle and Gatsby. He eventually decides that “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…” (Fitzgerald 179). Nick is appalled by Tom, Daisy, and Jordan and the last thing he says to Gatsby is: “They’re a rotten crowd… you’re worth the whole damn bunch put together” (Fitzgerald 154).

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Compared to his home “across the courtesy bay” was where the “white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water” were located. From this description, Nick is seen as viewing two different types of America. There is the middle west culture and the high stuck up east coast culture.

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Nick seems not to be oblivious to his sadness, although he lacks knowledge about the cause of the emotion, for he admits that dinner alone at the Yale Club is, “for some reason [,]…the gloomiest event of [his] day” (62). After dinner, Nick studies in the library, which he considers a quiet and “good place to work”, although he does mention that “there generally a few rioters”, which contradict Nick’s purpose for studying there, because if Nick really didn’t want to be disturbed he would go home (62). After studying for about an hour, “if the night [is] mellow” Nick restlessly “strolls around” the avenues and although among many, he still “[feels] a haunting loneliness” and can “[feel] it in others”(62). However, Fitzgerald relates Nick’s loneliness to that of “young clerks”, who “wast[e] the most poignant moments of night and life” “loitering” and waiting around for people to come and provide work for them, which parallels Nick’s own method of wasting time and waiting for people to provide him with something to

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In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses weather to comment on the relationships of characters and cities. The Valley of Ashes is a valley of hopelessness everyone who lives there is poor and the sky is alway grey and filled with ashes. For example when the valley of Ashes is described in the beginning of the book (Fitzgerald 23) “This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.” This examples gives the city a gloomy mood.

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Nick had attempted to escape from this lifestyle but because he was unable to make a complete decision in the beginning, he kept living it through the Buchanans; they were Nick’s window to the past. He witnesses Tom’s affair being “insisted upon wherever he was known” (21) without shame, and Daisy “[turn] out the light” (117) in her relationship with Gatsby, as it it never happened. A quiet bystander, never interfering, he experiences their life of ignorance, one with no repercussions, the one he had. Unwilling to remove himself from them, he instead complies to their wants, their decisions that create a sense of accomplishment. Doing nothing to change and move on from his past, Nick makes his choice to move to the east pointless.

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Polo player Tom Buchanan had an ongoing relationship with George Wilson 's wife Myrtle that ended very dramatically with the death of Myrtle in a car accident as well as causing the murder of Jay Gatsby. It was not till this time where George started to realize that his wife was having an affair and this made him very upset as Nick says “He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world and the shock had made him physically sick. ”(Fitzgerald 130). Tom took Gatsby 's car to get gas at George 's garage on his way to the city to meet with Gatsby. While getting gas Myrtle saw that it was Tom in the car and was upset because she was locked in a room and wasn 't allowed to see anyone.

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Nick Carraway is the narrator of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This novel is a story about the love triangle of Daisy Buchanan, Tom Buchanan, and Jay Gatsby, told from the perspective of Nick. Nick moves to Long Island, New York, where he encounters the lives of his cousin Daisy and her husband Tom, as well as his wealthy neighbor Jay. Throughout the story, Nick shows that he is judgmental, dishonest, and passive. Nick is an extremely judgmental person throughout his life.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, tackles social and ethical problems that are found in his own time. Fitzgerald was born in Minnesota and as he became a writer, he moved to “the racy, adventurous” (Fitzgerald 56) New York City in 1919. In the film, director Baz Luhrmann accurately portrays the differences between East and West using colors and the positioning of the camera to show Fitzgerald's position. Fitzgerald's goal was to portray the backgrounds of his characters into a never ending chain of cause and effect, from where they once lived to their present situation and how that affects their personality.

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Myrtle and George lived in the valley of ashes and had different ways of attempting to get out but both ultimately died horribly. George was a hard working, God-fearing man and he tried to escape poverty through hard work and determination but in an age of godlessness, it was not enough to live a successful and happy life. Myrtle on the other hand tried to cheat her way into the

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‘I want to get one of those dogs,’ she said earnestly.” suggests Myrtle enjoys spending money (Fitzgerald 27). When she snuck off with Tom, she lived a lavish lifestyle because he has the money to support it. Could this be the reason why she was in a relationship with him? She was married to George, who was a deranged and penniless soul who owned a garage in the Valley of Ashes, “a certain desolate area of land… where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens”.

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Just like Daisy, Myrtle chooses money over love. She cheats on her husband George with Tom. Myrtle was a woman from the lower class who desired to be a part of the higher class. Tom spoiled Myrtle and gave her the lifestyle she always wanted. She belittles her husband and talk bad about him because he is not at the top of the social ladder where Tom is.

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“Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern Life” (Fitzgerald 176). Nick found that that the life of glitz and glamour was no longer captivating. The east was changing him into the exact person he hates. The corruption of the east showed him how much he had changed and wanted to move back to the west,to his

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Tom cared more about his affair with Myrtle than his own wife. Neither Tom nor Daisy truly wanted to be in the relationship. George had his life all mixed up not knowing that Myrtle is being unfaithful to him. These instances of dishonesty from all of these characters against each other result in their own twisted realities due to unfaithfulness and dishonesty.

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Tom’s altercation with Myrtle accentuates his hypocrisy and lack of self-control; while he doesn’t feel guilty for cheating on Daisy with Myrtle, he feels that he has the right to maintain his authority over Myrtle. In this same scene, Myrtle, who is also drunk, draws attention to the negative aspects of her personality.

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