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The great gatsby social hierarchy critics
Social structure portrayed in great gatsby
How wealth causes problems in the great gatsby
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The Great Gatsby In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald communicates through his text, the ideas and general attitude of the characters. Each of the character's ideas and attitudes can place them into one of three places where they would most likely live, either East Egg, West Egg, or the valley of ashes. The characters that lived in the East Egg are those who have been wealthy for a while. The characters that lived in West Egg are a lot like characters from the East egg, but they haven't been wealthy for as long as those who live in East Egg. The characters who live in the Valley of Ashes are quite different from those who live in East and West Egg, this is because the Valley of Ashes is for the non wealthy. The location of where the characters live plays an important role throughout the novel and shows the ideas and attitudes of the characters. The characters who live in East Egg are the wealthy and those who have been wealthy for generally a long time this is expressed when Nick says, “East Egg is the home of Old Money citizens like Daisy and Tom”. Those who live in East Egg are viewed more highly by the society, this is because the people from East Egg had more connections and contacts, which is desperately wanted by those from West Egg. The characters from East Egg are generally arrogant and rude an example of …show more content…
Although West Egg is for the wealthy, they are not viewed as highly as the people from East Egg, this is shown when Nick states, “I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two”. The people from West Egg look up to the people from East Egg, this is because even though the people from East Egg might be arrogant, they still have contacts through the social ladder. The people from East Egg are normally, polite and suck ups because they are interested in being socially
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.
Class identity and social structure was a big thing in the Roaring 20 's. In the Great Gatsby, Long Island was divided into two to three social classes. There is East and West Egg, and then The Valley of Ashes. The Valley of Ashes were where poor people worked, and where Myrtle, a mistress of Tom Buchanan resides. East and West Egg were where old and new money people are. East Egg residents just made tons of money, but still are looked down upon by West Egg residents. West Egg residents had that money for generations. If West Egg residents want to start a new generation with some other rich partner though, where do they stand? Why are the West Egg residents so looked down upon as well by East Egg?
Homes can say many things about their owners and how they are in terms of their social position, life style, and their personality. There is Tom and Daisy Buchannan which live in East Egg and are new money and they have a very large house l. There is also Nick who lives in a very small house compared to the two houses on the left and right of his house and he lives in West Egg like Gatsby. Gatsby has a gargantuan house and unlike the Buchanan's, Gatsby has many parties for anyone to come. Everybody's own home describes their life style, social position and their personality.
Chapter 1: Chapter one introduces the reader to the narrator Nick Halloway and most of the other other characters of the story. Including his cousin daisy, her husband tom and their friend jordan - the golfer. Nick comes from a wealthy family; however, doesn’t believe in inheriting their wealth. Instead he wishes to earn his own wealth by selling bonds in the stock market. Chapter one also talks about the separation of the rich. Where the east egg represents the inherently rich whereas west egg represents the newly rich. The people in the east also seem to lack social connections and aristocratic pedigree. Whereas the people in west egg possess all those qualities usually lacked by people in the east.With nick living
The West Egg houses are more recently built and are elaborately decorated, where as the houses in East Egg are still as big but very conservative in architecture. The two neighborhoods represent the division of the upper class at this time in America. During the 1920's, the conservative "old rich" despised the "new rich". A good example of an "old rich" family would be the Rockefellers, where as a "new rich" family would be the Kennedys. The East Egg represents the conservative money of the "old rich".
All of the inhabitants of East and West Egg use one another to get what they want, with little care as to how it will affect the people around them. Through the eyes of Nick Carraway, we see how the wealthy live: they live in a luxurious society surrounded by their own lies and deception. Looking in from the outside, their lives seem perfect; they have everything that money can buy, right? Wrong, the one thing that their money cannot buy them is happiness, and this is why each character deceives someone.
Gender roles are being reinforced and race and social values overlap in this story of the rich and privileged. Especially, since she had a child involved, Daisy was suppressing her delicate side and displayed crudeness. Nick, above all, had his own perspective on everyone. He seems to be also mesmerized by Gatsby and the legacy he left behind; appalled at Tom and his emphasis on racism and reinforcement of sexism; disappointed with Daisy and her irrational ways and contented with Jordan who seemed to be the only normal one of the group. West Egg in its entirety made him look at life differently.
The heart of the whole notion of wealth lies in the setting of the novel, the east and west eggs of New York City. The west egg was a clustering of the "Nouveau riche" or the newly acquired rich, and the east egg was where the people who inherited their riches resided. The eggs divided the people rich in two with the poor being limited to the middle, the "valley of ashes". Even the way the narrator, Nick Carraway, describes the two communities' gives off a feeling of superiority. Nick describes the east as " the less fashionable of the two, through this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them" (...
Nick lives in West Egg in a rented house that "[is] a small eye-sore" and "had been overlooked"(Fitzgerald 10). Nick lives in a new-rich West Egg because he is not wealthy enough to afford a house in the more prominent East Egg. His house symbolizes himself shy and overlooked. Nick is the Narrator and also the "trust worthy reporter and, ...judge" that has ties to both the East and West Egg crowd(Bruccoli xii).
In conclusion, the setting and geography of The Great Gatsby is an exceptional influence on many things such as characters’ personalities, themes, and foreshadowing. It relates characters to where they live and how they act. East and West Egg, the valley of the ashes, and Nee York City all house different types of people that the main characters in the story represent. The setting, especially the weather foreshadows what will happen that day in the novel. If one regards the locations and conditions they may find out a lot about what a certain character is planning to do or how they are feeling on that particular day. Therefore, the setting and geography dictates many things about the characters such as social status, personality traits, and background, while the weather incorporates a character’s feelings into the setting.
In The Great Gatsby, the Valley of the Ashes illustrate the inequality between its inhabitants and that of West Egg and East Egg, in terms of social standing and income, as well as the hopelessness of poverty resulting from the inability of its inhabitants to rise up the socio-economic ladder. Thus, the valley represents the failure of the Dream that America promises, which is the ideal of equal opportunities for all, associated with the New World.
Fitzgerald’s uses setting to describe how West Egg and East Egg represent new money and old money. West Egg represents the new money and East Egg, the old money. While they seem quite similar at first, because they are expensive places to live. West Egg is described as “the less fashionable of the two, although there is little contrast between them.” But, yet there are many differences. Such as when Nick describes his own house as "an eyesore" that is "squeezed between
In both books status is the most significant thing in their society. Okonkwo and Tom 's high ranking in their society, reveals the cultural value of status which causes them to be careless. In The Great Gatsby’ social status is an immensely significant part as it separates geographical locations in the novel but above all, portrays the mentality of citizens belonging to different social class. The characters in the novel are separated by the money that they have and where they work or live. East Egg reflects a higher class society where the people are filthy rich, the author refer to them as “old money”. The people in East Egg are usually well educated and they have some sort of hatred towards the “new money”, which is known as West Egg. The people of West Egg are rich, but have only became rich recently.
Throughout “The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald characterizes the citizens of East Egg as careless in some form. This relates to the prominent class issue seen all through “Gatsby.” It seems as though Daisy and Tom almost look down upon others. At one point in the book, Nick says “in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.” It is because of their belief of superiority that they deem themselves better than other and allows them to live so carelessly.
Setting is essential to any good novel, it envelopes the entire work and pervades every scene and line for, as Jack M. Bickham said, “when you choose setting, you had better choose it wisely and well, because the very choice defines—and circumscribes—your story’s possibilities”. F. Scott Fitzgerald created a setting in The Great Gatsby that not only is an overarching motif in the story, but implants itself in each character that hails from West Egg, East Egg, and the Valley of Ashes. West Egg, symbolizing the new, opportunistic rich, representative of the American dream, East Egg, the established, aristocratic rich, and the Valley of Ashes, the crumbling decay of society, are linked together in the “haunted” image of the East, the hollow, shallow, and brutal land that Fitzgerald uses to illustrate the hollow, shallow, and brutal people living there (176).