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What Does West Egg Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

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For most the American Dream is pursued by working hard, showing determination, and achieving your goals to live a lavish lifestyle. In “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby craves to be a part of the upper class society. Gatsby built his wealth through illegal matters, all to get back to who he believes is his true love Daisy. Daisy desires a life of luxury and privilege, to be taken care of by whomever she marries. Daisy’s American dream of being an upper-class wealthy woman is shown through the symbols of her being a golden girl, the palaces of East Egg, and the color white, all symbolizing her upper class status and the lifestyle many Americans with an American Dream pray to accomplish. In “The Great Gatsby '' Daisy portrays a golden girl …show more content…

In “The Great Gatsby” East Egg is the desirable place to live, representing to others their status and history of old money, all who live in East Egg buy their homes, while the residents of West Egg must rent their home because they are not as wealthy. “The consoling proximity of millionaires — ... Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water” (Fitzgerald 7). Fitzgerald is describing a neighborhood of high stature of which Daisy’s home and lifestyle portrays. The American Dream of achieving wealth and high stature is perfectly represented through how Daisy’s neighborhood is described from Fitzgerald. According to Barbara Will ‘s “The Great Gatsby and The Obscene World” East Egg represents the tight knit social class as well as the American Dream “the immediate community of East Egg but also the very concept of Americanism itself” (Will 214). Achieving this elite social status means cutting out anything that does not relate out, this community is a perfect representation of that, showing that they believe all they need is wealth to be

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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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Despite Gatsby’s efforts of throwing big parties at his estate and living in an extravagant mansion, Daisy is not impressed and Gatsby’s fate leads him to a life without Daisy. Additionally, the parties Gatsby hosted “offended her — and inarguably, because it wasn’t a gesture but an emotion… appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing” (Fitzgerald 83). Daisy is unimpressed due to her old money status of East Egg, which provides her with stability and security. While, the new money of West Egg is illustrated in a way that Daisy is

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Long Island, New York North Shore, commonly referred to as Long Island, is the actual name of the setting in The Great Gatsby. The term “East Egg” refers to the North Shore village, Kings Point. The real name of the fictional area, “West Egg”, is Sands Point.

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There are two main upper class groups in “The Great Gatsby” - the established “old money” and the nouveau riche. F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts the dichotomy of these social groups with the two areas of East Egg and West Egg, separated by a “courtesy bay”. People who live in East Egg descends from old wealth, while members of the West Egg are the nouveau riche, people who have only recently earned their money without having to inherit their family’s wealth. This geographical setting represents the social strata present in New York City in that time period as well as delineates how the themes of moral scarcity and corruption may fluctuate along with the various locations. Fitzgerald illustrates West Egg as "the less fashionable of the two eggs",

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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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It was where the people that thought they had achieved the American dream lived. Gatsby as our most important example shows us in color. He likes to expose his wealth by having “large parties” where there is live music, alcohol, bright lights, and people from the non-elite and elite social class (p.49). Nick describes to us the preparation toward the party, he mentions how [the juice from two hundred oranges is extracted every week for his parties] implying the measures he takes to make his party extravagant (p.39). Most of the people attending the party are new money and belief to be experiencing the American dream of glamour and wealth.

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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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Important Concepts in The Great Gatsby In The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, there were a few noticeable themes throughout the duration of the novel. Important themes include the ranking of social classes, the passage of time, and the ideas of honesty and morality. The most significant was wealth. There were many leitmotifs described in the novel, like the leitmotif of wealth and possessions, and the how passage of time develops the theme of wealth.

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In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, the author uses the novel’s different geographical setting to represent the American Dream and its downfall. The book shows the differences between old and new money through the geography of East Egg, West Egg, and the Valley of Ashes. All these locations symbolize how different people achieve the American Dream differently and how some have it easier than others. In the novel, the geography of East and West Egg shows the division between social classes.

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Tom and Daisy, whom reside in East Egg, are a clear example of the old wealth class because when Nick first catches sight of their house, he describes it as, “Glowing with reflected gold” (Fitzgerald 9). The old money status of the Buchanans is practically visible simply by looking upon their home. When Gatsby visits Daisy in her home for the first time, he takes care to impress her. Nick describes the scene as, “The front door opened nervously, and Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored tie, hurried in” (90). Gatsby’s attire and choice of tie has symbolic meaning behind this tiny detail, meaning to show off his wealth and status.

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In the Great Gatsby economic wellbeing is a to a great degree critical component as it recognizes geological areas in the novel yet more essentially, depicts the attitudes of individuals having a place with various social class' which influences the occasions that happen and shape a considerable lot of the characters. The characters in the novel are recognized by their riches and where they live or work and are isolated by the distinctive settings inside the novel. East Egg reflects high class society where the tenants are rich, regarded to as "old money". Societal position and riches, which we can go together, likewise shape characters and their joy with their circumstances. For instance, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the Valley of Ashes abhors her life at the corner store and venerates the city life

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Carraway and Gatsby live in West Egg, which is described as, “the less fashionable of the two,” (Fitzgerald 7). However, East Egg is described as a much more favorable place of even greater wealth. Moreover, it is evident that only people who have always been wealthy can afford to live in East Egg as Tom Buchanan’s family had always been rich before he was successful. Thus, this might show that there are differences in achieving the American dream, as those in the West Egg seem to be depicted as poor before becoming successful. This might be ironic, as people in West Egg have truly achieved their goals through struggle and work although they live a technically less comfortable life.

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The massive increase in wealth following World War I in America created a new culture of a glamourous and party lifestyle. Although the 1920s seemed like a great era of peace and prosperity from a distance, Fitzgerald shows that it was a time of flaunting hollow wealth and following a culture of carelessness. Gatsby’s mansion is the main focus point of East Egg, being a place where a majority of the story takes place. Nick described it as “ a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden(4).” The main that Fitzgerald was trying to demonstrate through this description was the ultimately hollowness of the mansion itself.

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In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald shows that the situation that one in born into determines many aspects of his or her life and one can never truly transcend these circumstances. One aspect of life that birth affects is social status. In the book, the nouveau riche inhabitants of West Egg can never truly fit in with the ancestral East Egg families. Daisy Buchanan, an East Egg woman, is “appalled by West Egg,” and her husband Tom believes that the “newly rich people are just big bootleggers” (107). They believe that they are superior to the West Egg people because, as East Eggers, they were born into wealth, while the West Egg people needed to work to earn it for themselves because they were not born into luxurious lives.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby follows this idea through the life and actions of Jay Gatsby, who is a thirty-year-old man in the 1920s. He has poor Midwestern roots and works hard to obtain a lavish lifestyle on the East Coast. Gatsby and his neighbor Nick Carraway both live in luxurious houses in a rich neighborhood near New York City, known as West Egg, since they have graduated from Ivy League schools to afford such prosperous

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