What Does West Egg Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

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. Gatsby was a poor farm boy who later on changed his name and reinvented himself completely to become successful. Through symbolism, the novel The Great Gatsby explores how F. Scott Fitzgerald conveys the failure of the American dDream to those who believed it would bring them success, deceiving them by always

Gatsby grew up as a poor farm boy who later joined the army, and when young Jay Gatsby met Daisy he fell in love with her and the thought of being with her, but at the same time he fell in love with the idea of being rich. Years later, when Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, who is Daisy’s first cousin, has just moved into a house next to Gatsby’s in West Egg, he first sees Gatsby when he is reaching out towards a green light in the water. “He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been at the end of a dock” (Fitzgerald 20-21). Nick makes note that Gatsby might have been

The Valley of Ashes is the industrial area between the two and it is described as depressing. It is depressing in the way that everything there is grey and covered in smoke. “This is the 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” (Fitzgerald 23). When describing the area Nick describes the buildings and the land surrounding them as if they were built from ashes rather than covered in them. Nick’s description implies that the valley was not created by accident rather it was created by the higher class that surrounded it who do not pay any attention to the people without as much money. The area is inhabited by auto repair shops and salvage yards and above all of them a billboard can be seen with two big eyes that advertise an oculist by the name of Doctor TJ Eckleberg. “But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a non-existent nose. Evidently some wag