East Egg

Tom and Daisy Buchanan live in East Egg

Tom is a racist, rude man who believes others are below him just because they aren’t wealthy or from ‘old money’. He looks down on others and is one of the reasons that Gatsby ends up dead along with Wilson.

Daisy leads off this persona of a pious, pure lady. She is indeed very smart and uses her only sense of power to control Gatsby. No one is actually in love with her they just love the idea of being with her and what that will bring them, she isn’t in love with them either though and uses their money for her status. She is the person who causes all the chaos resulting in three people dying, ironically all of them poor or once were.

“A cheerful red-and-White Georgian colonial mansion”

“Across the bay the White palaces of fashionable East egg glittered.”

West Egg

Nick and Gatsby live in West Egg

Nick comes from an ‘old money’ family that is possibly why he is trusted by Daisy and Tom also. He moved East for an adventure and to experience life of the east, he worked in bonds trying to eventually live a life of the ‘upper class’ and achieve ‘The American Dream’. His views and goals change after he realises that this style of living is corrupt and cruel.

Gatsby is part of the ‘new money’ part of long island, West Egg. People with new money are sought to be flamboyant and feel the need to show it off such as throwing large parties that aren’t considered ‘moral’ in the East Egg opinion. People in West Egg likely got their quick wealth from illegal deals just to achieve ‘The American Dream’. Gatsby is an example of those men.

“I lived at West egg – the less fashionable of the two”

‘The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard–it was 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.’

Valley Of Ashes

Myrtle and George Wilson live in the Valley Of Ashes

Myrtle lives in the valley of ashes with her husband Wilson. She is shown to be one of the corrupted by the upper class, she has an affair on Wilson with Tom Buchanan. Daisy also ends up killing Myrtle on accident by running her over. She seeks a different life, one that is more luxurious and fashionable. When she was in New York with Tom she put on this persona of who she wishes she would be, that is rich and sophisticated.

Wilson is probably the most hard working out of all of the characters, he is the exact image of someone being led along by the American Dreams false idea. He hopes for someone to just love him and to be comfortable, instead he slaves away everyday not actually getting anywhere. His death was a result of the East Eggs carelessness.

This is a 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.

Then the valley of ashes opened out on both sides of us, and I had a glimpse of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality as we went by.

New York City

New York in this novel is seen to be the place where anything could happen. Anyone could be or become anything, I believe that it was a place that the characters could escape their true selves and be who they wish they were.

“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”

‘Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge,’ I thought; ‘anything at all. . . .’ Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.