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How Does Fitzgerald Present West Egg In The Great Gatsby

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The East and West Egg reflect Tom and Daisy’s presiding class dominance. Fitzgerald first introduces the places where the main characters Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy live by describing them as “a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay” (5). Already Fitzgerald gives the idea that these eggs have very similar features but are somehow different through his word choice of “identical” and “separated”. Fitzgerald places Gatsby on the West Egg and Tom on the East egg. They are “identical” in wealth but “separated” by class. The West Egg is described as the “less fashionable of the two” (5). By describing the West as “less”, it highlights that East Egg is better than West Egg and therefore its inhabitants have something greater than the other. …show more content…

Tom and Daisy both were born into wealth and Gatsby only recently acquired the money. While referring to Gatsby, Tom says “a lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers, you know" (107). Tom has a haughty tone as seen through describing the people as “just big bootleggers”. The “just” indicates that Tom doesn’t think very highly of the newly rich people like Gatsby. This shows more of the class difference that Fitzgerald has been pointing out with the setting. By describing Gatsby as a “bootlegger”, it shows Gatsby to be dishonest in the way he acquired his money. This shows the corruption of the American Dream as it was a time to be successful through hard work, but through unlawful ways Gatsby becomes corrupt in his morals and turns to achieving his money in any way he can in order to win Daisy. Through setting Fitzgerald is characterizing Tom and Daisy as higher in social position that Gatsby and furthermore showing the corruption of the American Dream through

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, follows the struggles among characters living in Long Island, New York in 1922. The story centers around Jay Gatsby, a millionaire who is obsessed with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. This obsession leads to scandal, heartbreak, and death. Fitzgerald deftly uses East and West Egg, the billboard, and the green light as symbols to advance his plot and quality of the novel. Fitzgerald begins the novel by introducing the narrator, Nick Carraway, a young man from the Midwest who travels to New York to learn the ways of a bondman.

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Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy, a member of this privileged class, is a reflection of his desire to advance socially and obtain acceptance from the privileged classes. Tom Buchanan, a member of the Old Money, serves as a vehicle for Fitzgerald to stress the sense of entitlement that comes with being born into a well-off family. Tom embodies the arrogance and cruelty of the upper class, using his wealth and power to control and manipulate those around him. Fitzgerald also critiques the American Dream through the character of Gatsby, who’s despite all his effort he is unable to escape his lower-class trappings, suggesting that the pursuit of wealth and status can lead to moral decay and disillusionment. Gatsby's obsession with his past and his longing for the unattainable Daisy ultimately leads to his tragic demise.

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In the novel, The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, the West Egg represents wealth and the dark side of the American Dream. It also represents the self-made part of America during the 1920s. The West Egg is home to Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire and the host of many extravagant parties. Gatsby's parties symbolize the excessive and fake nature of the 1920s, where wealth and status was more important than anything else. When Nick, the narrator, describes Gatsby's parties, he says “ People were not invited --- they went there” (Fitzgerald 34).

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However, in reality, Daisy is a shallow, greedy, and selfish woman. She yearns to have a lavish lifestyle and because of this, marries Tom, a very wealthy man. However, it is not just the wealth that interests Daisy, it is also the fact that Tom is an Old Rich as opposed to Gatsby, a New Rich. Tom, unlike Gatsby, inherited his wealth from his family while Gatsby obtained his wealth independently in his lifetime. Old Rich live in the lavish East Egg and New Rich live in the West Egg “the less fashionable of the two” (5).

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Janessa Collingwood Mrs Forker English 11-0 1 March 2023 Symbols in The Great Gatsby Throughout F. Scott Fitzgerald’s infamous novel The Great Gatsby he uses multiple symbols to symbolise the moral conflict in pursuit of the American Dream. The American Dream is a major theme in The Great Gatsby and the life of Jay Gatsby is a personification of the American Dream. Jay Gatsby lived in West Egg, in Long Island during the roaring twenties.

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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitgerald is about how people with a high social standing can achieve their American Dream. The Great Gatsby is about Jay and Daisy who fell in love but, she married someone else when he went to war. He tries to win her back showing her that he has money. Fitzgerald uses Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan in order to illustrate his theme regarding society in the 1920s; the power of money was the way to a person's version of the American Dream.

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One of the major themes that was present throughout the novel, the Great Gatsby, by F.Scott Fitzgerald, is the shallow and hollowness of the upper class people. Throughout the novel a series of events occur that support the idea of the upper class having a shallow life. Firstly, the relationship between the two characters Daisy and Tom, whom have been married for 5 years, seems to proceed towards a broken marriage. The two individuals lack loyalty and faithfulness to one another, even after being bonded in a marriage, for up to 5 years they have no attachment or feelings to one another. Tom is portrayed as a womanizer and has never been fully committed to his wife, and on the other hand his wife continuously has a new love interest, depicting both of the individuals as shallow and feeling-less.

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The Great Gatsby and The Americans share many common motifs. Three major ones that I noticed were social classes, racism and loneliness. The Great Gatsby highlights the definite social class differences between East Egg and West Egg. Nick says, “I lived at West Egg, the well-less fashionable of the two, though this is a superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them.”

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" It is here that Tom essentially recognizes Gatsby's way of living, however illegal it may be, as worthless due to his pretentious belief that the upper class consists only of those with old money and excludes those with newly hard earned wealth. With the application of imagery, Fitzgerald separates Tom and Gatsby's background and shows its effects on the traits and thought processes of each character, which adds to the diversity that creates such a rift between classes within itself that it essentially dismantles

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Scott Fitzgerald is one of the great American novels of the twentieth century primarily due to book tackling the concept of the American Dream in the roaring twenties. Each of the characters in the novel symbolizes how the American Dream has turned from a form of hope and aspiration towards greed and lack of morals. The general focus of novel is on the character Jay Gatsby, who readers learn about through Nick Caraway’s point of view. Near the end of the novel, the reader learns that Gatsby is a self made man who came from a working class family, joined the army, and through extremely hard work makes a life for himself. Gatsby’s main goal in becoming wealthy was to be with his sweetheart from the army, Daisy.

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People who read the book The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald, mostly admire the character of Gatsby for his persistent affection to Daisy. He is admired for changing his life to win back the heart of Daisy. He spent large amounts of money to hold parties every week in order to attract Daisy back to his life; he bought a magnificent house in the West Egg to be close to the house of Daisy and Tom which is just across the river, the East Egg; he loved Daisy so much that he is willing to cover for Daisy. People also appreciate Gatsby for not being pretentious when he became rich. On the other hand, the character of Tom who comes from old money family is supposed to be elegant and elite, always says some drastic words to despise others.

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The Corruption of The American Dream in The Great Gatsby In the novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald illustrates society in the 1920’s and the desire for the people with in it to achieve the American Dream, which embodies the hope that one can achieve power, love and a higher economic/social status through one’s commitment and effort. The novel develops the story of a man named Jay Gatsby and his dream of marrying what he describes as his “golden girl”, also known as, Daisy Buchanan, his former lover. Fitzgerald explores the corruption of the American dream through the Characters; Myrtle, Gatsby and Daisy.

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Peoples’ morality and culture is defined as differing from continent to continent, country to country, or even as small as state to state. At times, the ethics differ even between city and city, but for the two Eggs, the difference lies between mere neighbors. On one morning as Nick steps outside his house, Gatsby appears in his Rolls-Royce which Nick describes as “a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns” (64). Just observing Gatsby’s vehicle implies Fitzgerald’s view of the East Egg’s new-money residents as everyday and lacking in social graces. The Rolls-Royce itself is a stereotypical rich-man’s car, in the 1920s selling at 400 thousand dollars in today’s

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Gatsby then gets involved with the nightmare of the American Dream. Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s perfectly as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. This novel shows the lack of social skills in newly made millionaires such as Gatsby that cannot even pick up on an invitation to lunch. This book was enjoyable to read because it set in when America was becoming an economic superpower and it was relatable in some ways.

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But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there—it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at his camp was to him” (158). The phrase “breathless intensity” characterizes Gatsby’s reaction to seeing such wealth, and the word “air” expresses a sort of intangibility of her wealth. The juxtaposition between Gatsby and Daisy’s perspectives, “breathless” versus “casual,” allude to an insurmountable gap between the idea of the self-made man and the difficulty of actually achieving upward class mobility in America. Here, Fitzgerald suggests that true wealth and class also require a comfortability and casualness toward luxury as evidenced by his comparison of Daisy’s house to Gatsby’s tent. Even when Daisy is ready to leave Tom and Gatsby has the extravagant lifestyle, he is not satisfied.

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