West Egg Vs. West Egg In The Great Gatsby

In the novel “The Great Gatsby”, F. Scott Fitzgerald, an American author, shows the idea that the newly developing class rivalry between “old” and “new” money, in West Egg versus East Egg, in the struggle between Gatsby and Tom over Daisy. He develops this claim by first introducing the “valley of ashes” as a picture of absolute desolation and poverty. The valley of ashes symbolizes the moral decay hidden by the embellishment of the Eggs, which suggests that underneath all of the embellishments there is still the ugliness of the valley. Next he uses a simile to describe all the people who (rich people mostly) came to his parties and what it was kind of like, “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and

West Egg is known as the “new money” society. The people who live here had to work hard to earn their wealth. Two people that are examples of West Egg are Jay Gatsby and Meyer Wolfsheim. “I lived at West Egg, the-well, the least fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them.” In this quote, Nick introduces the difference between the East and the West Egg. Nick realizes that the difference between them is “superficial”. Fitzgerald is attempting to show that the perceptions that the two have on each other is shallow and that there is no actual difference between the two because both have wealthy individuals. “‘You live in West Egg’, she remarked contemptuously ‘I know somebody there’.” Jordan Bakers shows contempt for Nick merely due to the fact he lives in West Egg. This shows further how the East Eggers don’t see the West Eggers as being legitimate because they have not been wealthy their whole lives. “‘Who is this Gatsby anyhow?’ demanded Tom suddenly. ‘Some big bootlegger?’ ‘Where’d you hear that?’ I inquired. ‘I didn’t hear it, I imagined it. A lot of these newly rich people are just big bootleggers, you know.’” This quote furthermore demonstrates the conclusions that the old rich Americans, like Tom, would make about the “newly rich people”, like Gatsby. Tom assumed Gatsby was a bootlegger just based on the fact that he acquired his wealth