The Great Gatsby Literary Analysis In The Great Gatsby, does the interaction between the unsophisticated characters from the West and the corrupt characters from the East cause destruction and tragedy? In this novel, narrated by character Nick Carraway, the city is divided into a section for wealthy people, and a section for people who are not as privileged; these cultural divisions are known as the East and West Eggs. Carraway resides in the West and overtime he grows closer to the protagonist, his wealthier neighbor Gatsby. He soon finds out that Gatsby is in in love with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan who is married to Tom Buchanan and lives in the upscale East. Gatsby and Daisy eventually begin having an affair, and Tom is not pleased when …show more content…
In the following excerpt, "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had" (Fitzgerald 21), Nick Carraway recites a quote that his father once told him. This quote explains that sometimes it may be easy to point out another person’s flaws, they may not be as privileged as you are to notice them. "Both Myrtle and Gatsby are guilty of a crucial error in judgment. They are alike unwilling or unable to comprehend that it is not money alone that matters, but money combined with secure social position. In the attempt to transcend their status through a show of possessions, they are undone by the lack of cultivation that drives them to buy the wrong things” (Beuka), In this passage it is explained how when you come from a certain social class, it is hard to understand someone from …show more content…
Nick says of himself, “I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled…” As typified by the Buchanans, the very rich are cases of arrested development. They are adolescent, rootless, aimless, overbearing, arrogant, uninformed, racist, amoral and self-indulgent. They “drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together”—like the aimless rich Europeans in the opening of “The Waste Land” (Fitzgerald,