TO DO: KEY EVENTS AND ATTRIBUTES:
Valley of Ashes: -George&Myrtle Wilson
C. A representation of how The American Dream fails those who it was created to inspire hope for.
“About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land.”
“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.”
West Egg: -Jay Gatsby&Nick Carraway
B. A representation of how one can achieve the American Dream corruptly.
West Egg represents new money and contains the self earned wealthy people who worked for their money. They earned it them selves and came from the bottom to the top of the economy. Some of these people may have done it corruptly and illegally though, this is why they have not properly achieved the American Dream.
“I lived at West Egg, the – well, the less 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”.
East Egg: -Tom&Daisy Buchanan & Jordan Baker.
A. A representation of the false achievement of the American Dream.
East Egg represents old money and the established class who got money passed down to them through family. They haven’t properly achieved the American dream as they have always been set up to live a wealthy life so didn’t really have to work that hard.
“Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable east egg glittered along the water.”
“Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion, over looking the bay.”
NYC: -Tom&Myrtles Apartment
D. A representation of how one can live in the illusion of the American Dream.
“Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps sugar lumps built with a wish of non factory money.”
“Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge, I thought; anything at all… Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.”
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