Throughout history Long Island has become an important part of New York’s impactful past. From the creation of the Long Island Railroad to the post-war development of Levittown, Long Island has flourished into a truly remarkable place. Long Island has been referenced in many ways, but Long Island is most known for it’s setting in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald depicted New York City and Long Island, also known as “The Gold Coast”, as extremely vivid and lively in the 1920’s. In that time period, some of the wealthiest people in America settled in “The Gold Coast”. Though The Great Gatsby was not based on a true story, the setting in the story was based off of real places in Long Island, still standing today. Unfortunately not all were that lucky.
The “Gold Coast” is located throughout the towns of North Hempstead, Huntington, Oyster Bay, in Nassau and Western Suffolk county.1 The setting of the North Shore plays an extreme role in Fitzgerald’s novel. The Great Gatsby is well known for it’s characters, old wealth, and elite power in the “East Egg” of the Long Island coastline. The “West Egg” was the less wealthy of the two. In the book, Fitzgerald explains the differences in the setting of the East and West Egg. East Egg is depicted as very conservative with old styled mansions and a more elite status.2 The West Egg is seen as gaudy and flashy with brightly colored clothes and cars, causing them to be subsequently despised by the Easterners.3
There are many well known mansions in The Gold Coast, some are open to public use, and others were even used in feature films . These famous mansions include Old Westbury Gardens, Hemptstead house at Sand’s point, The Vanderbilt, and Oheka Castle. Old Westbury Garde...
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Erwert, Anna M. "The Grand Long Island Homes That Inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby'" On The Block. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 May 2014.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, and Matthew J. Bruccoli. The Great Gatsby. New York, NY: Scribner, 1996. Print.
"North Shore (Long Island)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 21 May 2014. Web. 23 May 2014. .
"Setting in The Great Gatsby - The Great Gatsby Mansion - Gatsby's Gold Coast." Setting in The Great Gatsby - The Great Gatsby Mansion. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 May 2014. .
"The Gold Coast." Long Island's Gold Coast. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 May 2014. .
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American classic, The Great Gatsby, tells a story of how love and greed lead to death. The narrator of the novel, Nick Carraway, tells of his unusual summer after meeting the main character, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby’s intense love makes him attempt anything to win the girl of his dreams, Daisy Buchanan. All the love in the world, however, cannot spare Gatsby from his unfortunate yet inevitable death. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald utilizes the contrasting locations of East Egg and West Egg to represent opposing forces vital to the novel.
Within the novel of the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses a symbolic setting to contribute to the novel's overall purpose. Right in the beginning of the great Gatsby, he introduces the idea of West Egg and East Egg. East Egg being where Tom Buchanan and Daisy reside, among other people who live lavishly off of their inherited family money,”across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water”(Pg.8). This part of the two eggs represents “old money,” which is the way the author calls wealth that has been passed on through generations within families.West Egg being the location where the narrator, Nick Carraway, and Jay Gatsby reside, represents “new money,”or people who are new to wealth, as opposed to people who have had it in their families,”West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two”(Pg.7). Fitzgerald sets this sort of tension between the West and East Eggers. Many of the East Eggers thought the entrepreneurs living on the West were shady, “A lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers…”(114). Between West Egg and East Egg, there is a place the author calls the Valley of Ashes, “a fantastic farm where ashes grow like
Gibb, Thomas. "Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby" The Explicator Washington: Winter 2005. Vol. 63, Iss.3; Pg. 1-3
Throughout the novel, East Egg demonstrates time after time the shallow underbelly of New York’s upper side. The inhabitants of this section of the city are what are known as the “old money”, meaning they come from families with money passed down through generation upon generation. Nick Carraway demonstrates unto the reader the grandeur of the area when he says, “Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water…” (Fitzgerald 5) referring to the homes opposite the bay of his. The people who occupy these homes, such as Tom and Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker, have never had to work a single day in their lives to secure and maintain their lavish and luxurious lifestyles, and will never have to because of the money that their families have procured throughout the generations. People here are reckless, and tend to not want to take responsibility for their actions. Jordan demonstrates...
The Great Gatsby is one of the most renowned books known to mankind. A story about a man’s quest to fit into a society built for the rich whilst wooing a childhood crush may seem extremely simple and straightforward, however, the mystery is not behind the plot, but rather, it is in the writing itself. The words F. Scott Fitzgerald used were chosen with such delicacy, one cannot even hope to assume that anything was a mere coincidence. The book is laced with intricate strands of symbolism bound together by a single plot. One of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s more major themes is the use of locations. The importance of location as symbols are further expressed through the green light at the end of the dock as well as the fresh, green breast of the new world.
The Great Gatsby a, novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, follows a cast of characters abiding in the town of East and West Egg on affluent Long Island in the summer of 1922. Each of the characters, while part of the same story line, have different priorities and agendas, each character working towards achieving what they think would benefit them the most. As The Great Gatsby’s plot thickens the characters constantly show their discontent of the American Dream that they are living, always expressing their greed for more, three particular offenders of this deadly sin are Tom, Daisy and Gatsby himself. The characters motives stem from a mixture of boredom, a need and longing for the american dream, and simple selfish human desire.
Bruccoli, Matthew J. Preface. The Great Gatsby. By F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. vii-xvi.
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream.
The Great Gatsby is a book written in 1925 by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The historical context of this book plays into the story entirely, considering the book was written and set in the 1920s. During this time, also known as the Roaring Twenties, the “flapper culture” was prominent, jazz music hit its peak, and although unlawful, bootlegging caught on as the means of getting alcohol since the prohibition in the United States had recently started. Also, during the time Fitzgerald was writing The Great Gatsby, he had been living in Great Neck, Long Island, New York along with many other newly rich writers, unlike those across the bay in Manhassen Neck: this being significant due to the fact that in the book, Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway live in West Egg across from “old money” Tom Buchanan in East
Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph, ed. (2000). F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: A Literary Reference. New
Tunc, Tanfer Emin. "The Great Gatsby: The Tragedy of the American Dream on Long Island's Gold Coast." Bloom's Literary Reference Online. N.p., 2009. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
Samuels, Charles T. "The Greatness of ‘Gatsby'." Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: The Novel, The Critics, The Background. Ed. Henry D. Piper. Charles Schribner's Sons, New York: 1970.
The first location, West Egg, correlates to a person who is dazzling and extravagant. A person who became rich and possesses new money just like people who live there. The person who corresponds to West Egg is Jay Gatsby. Both the location and person symbolize the rise of the new rich alongside the conventional aristocracy of the 1920s. Previously, only people who were born into their riches were generally part of the upper class. Social mobility was difficult for those in lower classes because the “old rich” who maintained their prosperity across many generations retained control. During the 1920s however, people were starting to acquire their wealth within their own generations giving themselves the name “new rich”. Gatsby is an example of a person who constituting his own fortune after belonging to a lower social class and economic stratum. Gatsb...
...and the upper middle class members mixed in the neighborhood, creating a disturbing mix. West Egg provided a direct confrontation to the establishment that disturbed the rich such as Daisy Buchanan (107). The residents of the city have foreign names like “Joens”, “Muldoon”, and “Eckheart” with uncouth professions such as actors and politicians (63). Epitomizing the qualities of the people and the buildings of West Egg is Jay Gatsby. Gatsby possesses a house designed to imitate royalty. However, Gatsby fills that very house with the risque parties, juxtaposing the old idea of wealth with a new one. The juxtaposition between the two ideas strongly characterizes the West Egg resident.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925