Setting – The Great Gatsby Exploration Task

East egg – “Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water” – I think that majority of East Egg hopes that the American dream will never be accomplished as they are the high end of society and they like to have more power over lower class citizens and be treated with more respect. I think that this is a reason why they let money be the priority in their lifestyle, so they have an advantage over people. These ideas are backed up by the fact that Daisy and Tom married for money and a good name rather than love and the way that they put their child on show and treated her like an object instead of a person.

West egg – “I lived at West Egg, the–well, least fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them.”, “Everyone in West Egg is a bootlegger” – The concept of the American dream of equality, opportunity, democracy, rights and liberty is not foreign to the people who call West Egg their home, I think that this is the area that strives the most to attain that kind of lifestyle. Also, Gatsby lives in this area which adds more depth in the idea that he isn’t so accepted in the high end living of East Egg and that he has had to pursue this dream to get where he is now – from rags to riches.

The Valley Of Ashes – “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.” – The Valley of ashes in The Great Gatsby is the most grotesque area which makes sense that it consists of the poorest people in the novel. The people living here seemed to be incapable of believing that the dream is attainable for them because they think it is impossible to go from having nothing to being happy in the situation they are in when they are clearly struggling. This is shown when it describes George Wilson as a spiritless man.

New York – “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.” – as a whole, people perceive this place to be full of prosperous people living the american dream, but as you peel away the layers of society, you find that it is an image covering the struggle they are obtaining to hold on to this false identity, they are striving to obtain the American dream.New York portrays to the outside world what the american dream is supposed to look like as it is filled with people who seem to be making the most of what they have.

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