An Analysis – Setting

1. New York City – “The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.” – Chapter 4

“Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge,’ I thought; ‘anything at all…’ Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.” Chapter 4

Anything can happen in America, if you work hard even the black man can become higher than he would be anywhere else. The American Dream isn’t mentioned in the book but it is implyed at least once in every chapter, chapter four even more than the ones before, this chapter hs Gatsby and Nick driving into New York City. Nick doesn’t know what to think of it except that it has hundereds of oppertunitys for eveyone, you just have to be clever enough to find them, like Gatsby was when Wolfshiem found him and offered him a job.

2. Valley of Ashes – “This is the Valley of Ashes – a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take form of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through powdery air.” – Chapter 2

“‘Terrible place, isn’t it,’ said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckelburg. ‘Awful.’” – Chapter 2

The valley of ashes shows the fall and underside of the American Dream, those who do not make it do not have the priviledge of large homes or real books or pools, like Wilson, he probably came to New York looking for an oppertunity and didn’t have the heart to carry through with it or didn’t find it. This is the side of the American Dream no one sees advertised, the people who have failed in their travel and hopes, but they stil try because it was promised to them by the world, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

3. West Egg – “I lived in 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.” – Chapter 1

“Everyone in West Egg is a bootlegger.” – Chapter 7

West Egg is one of the many examples that define the American dream, people who have achived what they were looking for, live there in mansions and large gardens that put the forest to shame. These are the people who worked hard to get what they have, but don’t carry it one as to save their money for the next generation so their investment grows. They don’t look to the future enough to see the value in what the east egg populace do, so they are scorned by that populace becuase they do not look to the future but to the fun time they are having now.

4. East Egg – “Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water.” Chapter 1

“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.” Chapter 5

This was Gatsby’s idea of the American Dream, he only had one more thing to obtain and that was love, and Daisy was his love, but he had created something that was not real to the world, but real to him. East Egg is the pinnacle of the American Dream, the populace is everything that the West egg populace want to be, they are inspiring, but that money and glory that has been passed down from the rich family before them. They save and invest, make good money because of their social standing, not because of their skill, they have everything that everyone else strives for. But they do not have kindness for the world, they are wrapped in a bubble that is not easily broken, a bubble that allows them to flee when they wrong someone or something, like how Daisy ran over Myrtle and didn’t take the fall for it. She had no sense that it was her fault, she thinks that because she is apart of the accomplishers of the American dream that she is able to run away from the problems she creates. And sadly it is true. The American Dream is as dangerous as it is wonderful.