Motifs In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald during the 1920’s. The novel represents many things in the roaring twenties and provides an insight to the time period. There are lots of motifs and symbols found within the novel. The Great Gatsby is written from the perspective of Nick and his experiences with a man called Gatsby. The narrator switches back and forth between present and past but most often recounts his tales of Gatsby. There are two dominate settings of the novel, East Egg and West Egg, that are used to advance a motif. The largest motifs are the reoccurrence of seeing through a façade, parties ending badly, and social class.
In the Great Gatsby there are many recurrences of eyes, they are used to show that something

In every chapter there is a party which generally ends badly. In the third chapter there is a party hosted by Gatsby at his house where Nick meets him for the first time. Generally each party ends badly or with a significant event. At this specific party Owl Eyes is a party guest. Owls in literature are generally associated with bad omens which in this case is fitting name for the guest. At the end of the night as the party was slowing down there was a car crash outside the house. In the car was Owl Eyes who stepped out of the vehicle first but then another person opened the driver’s door to reveal another victim and most likely the cause of the crash. “You don’t understand, explained the criminal. I wasn’t driving. There is another man in the car.”(9) Another party that was a failure happened out of town. In this party Gatsby was not invited instead it was Tom, Nick, and Myrtle. Myrtle is Tom’s mistress, she is from the valley of ashes which is similar to the slums. The party takes place at the house Tom bought specifically for Myrtle. There are many men and women there but not nearly the same as Gatsby’s parties as this is one for the rich men and their mistresses. At the end of the party Myrtle shouts, “Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” (37) This angers Tom so much that he punches Myrtle in the nose. The dispute was started by the difference in their minds about each other, Tom didn’t think Myrtle had any right to say

There are two sides as described by Nick an East and West Egg. “Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous Eggs, identical in contour and separated by a Courtesy Bay… I lived at West Egg, well the less fashionable of the two…across the Courtesy Bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water” (5). The Eggs are populated by two separate types of people. In West Egg the people are mostly blue collars meaning they got their wealth through their hard work and making something of themselves. In the East Egg the ones living there are from prestige’s families with long lineages, they don’t have to work or make a name for themselves because someone else already did. Another social class moment is when Nick and Tom go to the Valley of Ashes, the ones living in there are the laborers and working class. Compared to the Eggs where the sky is sometimes bright and everything is white or new, in the Valley of Ashes is dark and covered in soot. “A fantastic farm where she grows like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens” (23). This is where the Wilson’s live which means there is a huge gap between Daisy and Myrtle, part of the reason why Tom got so angry. T.J. Eckleburg is also in the Valley of Ashes showing that someone must have put the sign there but after a while they forgot all the people there after moving away. But the sign still sits there watching