Importance Of Setting In The Great Gatsby

Eudora Welty, a famous author once remarked, “Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else. Fiction depends for its life on place. Place is the crossroads of circumstance.” Welty understood the importance of setting. She understood that without a fully developed setting, a story cannot have purpose. In most successful pieces, setting plays a vital role in establishing theme, impacting plot transitions, and predominantly, introducing and developing characters and their roles in the work.

In his most popular work, “The Great Gatsby,” Francis Scott Fitzgerald implements the primary setting of the Roaring Twenties for these developments. This utilization is used as a

The characters that take residence in this region are the embodiment of the author’s view of these people in society. In this case these characters are Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Most likely as a result of the failure of the wealthy children in his childhood to accept him, Fitzgerald depicts member of the East Egg in a negative light. Tom is contemptuously described as an “arrogant” man with a “cruel body” (7). He also has a “mistress,” despite his marriage (24). In spite of this, he also flaunts her “wherever he was known,” showing his belief of superiority to others, and also the moderation of the moral code in the Jazz Age (27). As a member of the aristocracy, with enough money to “bring a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest,” Tom was able to wed a character who was initially seen as a supporter of the protagonist, Daisy, but was ultimately an adversary of good. Daisy’s prevalent trait is initially her “low, thrilling” voice (12). This feature paired with the aptronym in her name creates an angelic aura surrounding Daisy Buchanan. Regardless of these physically positive characteristics, morally, Daisy is anything but angelic. She is cooperative when falsely assuming she is entering a relationship with Nick. In fact, Daisy’s relationship with Gatsby was completely selfish as well, as proven when she “hadn’t sent a message or flower”

Both of these characters represent different aspects of Fitzgerald, focusing less on materialism, and more on achieving goals. Unlike Daisy, the reader finds himself or herself skeptical of Gatsby at first. There many rumors heard about him before meeting him. There is belief among the attenders of his party that “he killed a man once,” making the reader suspicious of this character (48). But later, one finds that his goal of reliving the past defines him, and he will do anything to do so. This is apparent when he invites Nick to his party, becomes his friend, and even “got [Nick’s] grass cut” to do so (82). Parallelism to Fitzgerald’s life is apparent in this instance. He is ambitious and a member of the new rich. If Gatsby epitomizes the part of Fitzgerald who is a flashy celebrity, who pursued glorified wealth in order to impress the woman he loved, then Nick represents a quiet, reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East. He is a reasonable man who believes that “reserving judgments is a matter of reasonable hopes” (2). Nick portrays ambition, because he is involved in the industry of finance. The defining characteristic of the West Egg is this ambition, differentiating the cultures in the East and West Eggs