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What Does West Egg Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

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“I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. [...] Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water” (14-15). -In Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s highly regarded novel, The Great Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan gets caught between a love for her first love, Jay Gatsby, and her current husband, Tom Buchanan. Gatsby proves to her that he loves her by throwing extravagant parties in her honor. Tom, her husband who isn’t always loyal, but always comes back to her. Stuck in the middle of this power struggle: the narrator, Nick Carraway. The two societies of East Egg and West Egg differ greatly …show more content…

The main color of the homes in East Egg are white. White symbolizes an element of irresponsibility and a corruption of the morals of the people that live there. The color also represents the false purity that Daisy has. “Her voice, is full of money” (120). “Old money” means money that is handed down throughout the generations and these people have had to do little to no work to earn their money unlike the people from West Egg. ”One thing's sure and nothing's surer, the rich get richer”(101). Most of the people from East Egg want nothing to do with West Eggers. East Eggers believe that they are better than those that live in West Egg and that they are in a class of their own at the top of the social ladder. Tom Buchanan never attended a party at Jay Gatsby's Mansion until Daisy requests that they do. He is unimpressed with the party and thinks that it is childish. East Egg and West Egg aren’t just places that people live, it is much more complex than that. They are almost in a constant war. Not a physical war but a social war between the classes. East and West Egg represent an actual hard-boiled egg. White on the outside symbolizes false impurities, but yellow on the inside which actually shows all of the bad in these snobby

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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.

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The benevolence of the color white reflects the family’s optimistic perception of American life in the beginning. The family keeps longing for their “white stucco house” (25) during their forced train ride to the internment camps, indicating the stability and peace the house brings to them. The white stucco house, an iconic enigma of the American Dream, also symbolizes the family’s desire to truly assimilate and create a solid sense of belonging in the country. One night in the internment camp, the mother becomes very restless and cannot bear to stay any longer. In an attempt to gain composure, she hangs a white sheet above her bed.

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The Buchanans are a family of east egg Tom Buchanan was born in a wealthy family and married his wife Daisy into this money. The Buchanans are seen as stuck up in the novel while tom and gatsby feud over Tom's wife Daisy Gatsby's life long sweetheart. F. scotts fitzgerald the Great Gatsby goes into great detail about the differences between the East and West Egg and there comparison and contrast by giving many details. Fitzgerald shows how two societies can be alike but different with the east and west egg one community is seen as a perfect community “A Mans Dream” and the other is seen as a corrupt town full of reckless rich people. The two are separated physically and socially because the East egg is built off of old money and the West egg is built off new money.

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190 Words | 1 Pages

There are two wealthy neighborhoods called East and West egg, furthermore, people in east egg have been rich for generations, yet east egg people look down on west egg people because west egg people started out poor and only recently acquired their wealth, for east egg people think west egg people do not know how to behave. Young, wealthy, handsome, mysterious Jay Gatsby owns a fabulous west egg mansion, even through Gatsby throws outrageous parties every weekend, still east egg people refuse to attend, meanwhile, Daisy's family has old money, likewise, Daisy's family lives in east egg, and Daisy's husband Tom is a cruel and controlling hypocrite. Gatsby and Daisy knew each other several years ago, although, at that time, Daisy was single and

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East Egg symbolizes the classy, upscale, always-had-money type of families. The Buchanan’s are an example of this, they

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Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanan’s. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. ”(The Great Gatsby page 5). This explains the difference between the East and West Egg. People who lived in East Egg were valued more over the West Egg.

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In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby," Nick Carraway is the narrator and main character who provides the reader with an insight into the lives of the wealthy socialites in 1920s New York. As he is introduced to Tom and Daisy Buchanan's opulent lifestyle, he uses language that reveals his opinion of them and what they represent. Through a careful analysis of the stylistic elements such as tone, diction, imagery, and syntax in Nick's language, it is clear that he views the Buchanan's as superficial, careless, and corrupt. Nick's use of tone sets the stage for his initial impression of the Buchanan's home and lifestyle. The opening of the novel finds Nick describing the East Egg as a "factual imitation" of a French chateau, which sets

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The setting takes place in the East Egg, West Egg, the Valley of ashes, and New York City. This correlates to the American Dream because of how people are separated and divided into areas based on wealth. The West Egg represents newly rich people - hard-earned wealth.

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Thus, through Gatsby’s wrongdoings, Fitzgerald implies that American morals have become tarnished in the race to become rich. However, although Gatsby does indeed become wealthy, he is never able to become a part of East Egg due to his criminal behavior and the fact that American society is centered around a specific type of wealth. Fitzgerald uses distinct imagery to show the stark difference between West Egg Gatsby and the East Egg Buchanans. He describes the “newly rich as offensive” whereas the the old rich are elegant and shrewd (Keshmiri). Therefore, through this striking imagery, he reveals that the American class system is essentially immobile; Gatsby is stuck in West Egg and is paralyzed from being able to move up the social ladder where his ultimate destination, Daisy, would lie.

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549 Words | 3 Pages

For centuries houses have been a way to showcase an individual’s social class, lifestyle and personality. The 1920s, during which The Great Gatsby is set, was an era of excess wealth where social position held great importance. F. Scott Fitzgerald extraordinarily represents three distinct social classes, lifestyles and personalities during this time with his descriptions of the houses belonging to Nick, the Buchanans and Gatsby. Nick Carraway’s West Egg house is “a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked” (1.14) much like the man who resides in it. Throughout the novel, Nick acts as more of an observer rather than a participant.

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1108 Words | 5 Pages

In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald the misperception between appearance versus reality is thoroughly demonstrated throughout the whole novel. We meet certain characters such as Jay Gatsby, Daisy and Tom Buchanan who all paint us a vivid picture of what it is like to be living in close geological quarters, but are ranked differently in society. Fitzgerald describes New York as two separated locations, East Egg and West Egg. Although they are geographically close, they differ in respect to morality, happiness and values. These factors are expressed through the characters which overall contribute to the theme of contrast within a society.

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514 Words | 3 Pages

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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The 1920s is known for the jazz age also called the roaring twenties. In that time America was undergoing lots of changes economically, socially and culturally. One of the major changes that took place was in the fashion. Fitzgerald in his writing shows not only the fashion but also the clothes symbolizes other too. One of the symbols greatly used in the great Gatsby is the symbolization of clothes, how they represent different things at different times.

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1034 Words | 5 Pages

Nick Carraway and Gatsby live in “West Egg, the -- well, the less fashionable of the two” (Fitzgerald 5). West Egg is the area where the self-made men and women,

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The Great Gatsby Appearance vs Reality The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is about how a man by the name of Jay Gatsby tries to win the heart of Daisy Buchanan, the woman he loves. The entirety of The Great Gatsby is told through the narrator, Nick Carraway. At first, Nick views the lifestyle of Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan and Daisy Buchanan in awe, but soon discovers that these people are not who they appear. Fitzgerald uses his characters and literary devices in The Great Gatsby to demonstrate the theme of appearance versus reality.

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