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Sierra Alley
Mr. Christopher Ozias
English 12
December 15, 2014
Settings of The Great Gatsby
Everyone has a different favorite part of a book. Whether it be the main characters, the
way the book makes you feel, or the twists and turns of the storys plot, it has an importance.
Often times, the importance of these components of a novel goes deeper than simply the story it
is telling. Authors tend to hide a bigger meaning behind key factors of a story, including light on
historical and personal influences, events occurring at the time the novel was written, and even
what the writer was like in real life. When looking at the setting within different novels, many
things can be discovered. The 1920s novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, is a great
example of an author using settings to reveal something more. Fitzgerald colored a beautifully
tragic world for his readers centered on New York. He included places like East and West Egg,
New York City itself, and a fictional area coined the Valley of Ash. Each setting in the novel
focusses on a different class of people, and Fitzgerald uses the descriptions symbolically.
Fitzgerald uses symbolic setting in the novel to symbolize social status and the strive for the
American Dream during the 1920s.
To fully understand the geographical symbols of The Great Gatsby, its important to
delve into the history occurring during the time the novel was written. Fitzgerald published his
work in April of 1925, shortly after World War I, and amidst one of the most interesting times in
history. Prohibition, which occurred between 1919 and 1933, made illegal the buying and selling

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of alcohol. This Act, that intended to make safer our society, created an entire underground realm
of illegal activity. It caused outrages amongst business owners, overall drove the people of the
time to forget about politics and religion, and focus mostly on taking advantage of the broken
system. With these rising underground bootleggers, also known as businessmen who made,
distributed, or sold alcohol illegally, came a new social class. Before prohibition, there were two
main groups of people; the wealthy, known in the novel as old rich lived life freely, able to do
as they pleased with a lifelong supply of inheritance, and the poor, associated with the valley of
ash in the novel, worked their entire lives, living day to day on their short incomes. Prohibition
brought about a new social class of the wealthy, known in The Great Gatsby as new rich. Now
there was not only turmoil between the poor and rich divide, there was turmoil within the upper
class individuals as well. With the economy booming, the illegal alcohol market creating
millionaires overnight, and a newfound careless attitude, people began striving for a so-called
American dream. This American dream described the dilemma of the social classes, where the
poor strived to get rich, and the rich wanted to get richer. This never ending cycle of not-goodenough was portrayed through many different ways in The Great Gatsby. Each character, setting,
and social class struggled through a different aspect of the American Dream, which affected
every aspect of their lives, including their interactions with different characters.
The first setting introduced is the infamous East Egg, located in present day Port
Washington. This is where the wealthier and more elite old rich individuals of the novel
resided. Fitzgerald described this setting as utterly elegant, older, and classier. Two main
characters, Daisy and Tom Buchanan lived in the East Egg. Their house is described as one of,
The white palaces of fashionable East Egg [glittered] along the water... (Fitzgerald 5) This

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location in the book is where elegancy is a way of life, and money is never a problem. Daisy and
Tom spend their lives traveling for no particular reason, and passing time with rich people in
their circle. This is a good example of the upper class during the 1920s. They spent their time
surrounded by other upper class individuals, and cared nothing about the world.
Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no
particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people
played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over
the telephone, but I didn't believe it--I had no sight into Daisy's heart but I felt that
Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence
of some irrecoverable football game. (Fitzgerald 6)
This quote, from The Great Gatsby, demonstrates how the old rich of this time were so
wealthy that they did not know what to do with themselves. They were restless, and forever
looking for something bigger and better, never content with what they had or where they were.
Then there was the West Egg, Great Neck in present day, home of the new rich and,
the less fashionable of the two. Nick Carroway, the narrator of the novel, and Jay Gatsby, the
most important character, resided here, although Nick seemed to be just an onlooker to the story,
not quite fitting in any setting. Gatsby, however, fit the new rich category spectacularly. His
home is described as, ... a colossal affair by any standard it was a factual imitation of some
Hotel de Ville in Normandy (Fitzgerald 5). The novel indicates that Gatsbys house is some sort
of replica, not an original, terribly gaudy and not classy, in contrast to the East Egg homes. West
Egg individuals, especially Gatsby, are known throughout the book to host and attend colossal
parties, and distastefully flaunt their riches. Unlike the classy East Eggers, they are newer to the

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wealthy lifestyle, and caught up the glamour of it all. There is also a mysterious tone to the new
riches of the time. East Eggers obtain their money from long lines of family ties and
inheritances, while many people are unsure of where people like Gatsby get their money. As
stated before, during the 1920s, many new millionaires were made from the bootlegging
industry. In The Great Gatsby, it is insinuated that this is how Gatsby makes his riches. There are
always wild rumors during his parties of who Gatsby is or how he came to be, but no one ever
truly knows. During the 1920s, and in the novel, the new riches spend their time flaunting their
money, but always striving for more. They strived to fit in to the classier upper class, to be a part
of the old rich and, in the novel, to be an East Egger.
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 ashesa 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. (Fitzgerald 23)
This quote from the novel explains a place in the middle of it all, yet a separate world
completely, the Valley of Ash. This is an industrial wasteland where the two poorest characters of
the story, Myrtle and George Wilson, live. In every description, it is described as dirty and
forgotten, unkempt, and bordered by a small foul river. (Fitzgerald 23) This setting in the novel
acts as a buffer zone between the new and old riches, home to the poverty stricken. This is a
great representation of the actual lower class citizens during the 1920s. It shows how the novel,

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and the country at the time, is only focussed on the rich and well-to-do and forgets about the
poor. George Wilson owns a car garage in the Valley of Ash, and loses his wife during the novel
to an affair with Tom Buchanan and a tragic car accident. Throughout the novel, he is the only
character to mention God and talk of religion, signifying the 1920s religion vacuum among the
upper classes, and the spiritual presence in mostly only the lower class. This setting is one of the
most powerful in The Great Gatsby, because it showcases the contrast between the classes. It
highlights that maybe the poor were the only actually happy characters in the book, finding
comfort and content in their spirituality, but that strive for something more still appears. Myrtle,
the wife of George Wilson, tries to climb her way up the social ladder by engaging in an affair
with Tom Buchanan, a member of the old rich. She describes her feelings about her husband:
I married him because I thought he was a gentleman...but he wasnt fit to lick my shoe....I knew
right away I had made a mistake. He borrowed somebodys best suit to get married
in. (Fitzgerald 34) This explains her drive to have more, and her unhappiness with her life as a
lower class citizen living in the Valley of Ash. Therefore, we can see that the lower class seemed
split between moral and content, and unhappy and wanting more.
New York City is the center of it all, the mix-up of the classes, and where everything
suspicious happens. Throughout the novel, the city is where characters go to play out the part of
their lives they would rather no one else know about. They go there for work and entertainment.
Tom and Myrtle have an apartment hidden in the city within a long white cake of apartmenthouses (Fitzgerald 28) They carry out their double lives there, mingling with friends, all the
while hiding it from their spouses. A business associate of Gatsbys, Myer Wolfsheim, is
introduced in the city during a lunch date between Gatsby and Nick. Wolfsheim mentions

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bootlegging, and it is inferred that Gatsby only often goes into town for business meetings. In the
novel, New York City is the single best representation of the American Dream. Gatsby goes there
to carry out his illegal work that, in turn, makes him outrageously rich, and Myrtle goes to the
city to climb the ladder through her elaborate affair. All around, people are seen working their
way up to the top through the bond business, meeting other people and other illegal activity. New
York City also symbolizes the corruption during this time through bootlegging, affairs and
overall activity lacking moral thought. It created a hub for people to come and be whoever they
wanted to be in order to climb to the top.
The different settings throughout the book do a great job of describing differences in
social classes, but also describe the barriers between the different social classes. The Long Island
Sound act as the physical barrier between West and East Egg, but is far more than just a body of
water. It signifies that the only thing keeping Daisy and Gatsby from ending up happy together is
not just the Sound, but also their social classes. Gatsby will never be part of the old rich
community, and Daisy, although she maybe does not often understand, will never be happy in the
new rich scene. When characters begin crossing these social barriers, violence is the outcome.
Tom and Myrtles apartment in the city is described as hot, stifling and boiling, signifying the
tension between the classes. The only acts of violence that occur throughout the novel occur
between social classes. Tom slaps Myrtle in the apartment and Daisy kills Myrtle in the Valley of
Ash, all acts of violence inflicted on a different class. This shows that people during the 1920s
were willing to do anything to get ahead, including inflict violence, and the American Dream had
a costly price.

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Each setting in the novel focusses on a different class of people, and Fitzgerald uses the
descriptions symbolically. Fitzgerald uses symbolic setting in the novel to symbolize social
status and the strive for the American Dream during the 1920s. Each character in the novel
belonged to a specific setting, further clarifying which social class each was a member of. The
idea that drove each character of The Great Gatsby, and many members of society during the
1920s, was the idea of achieving the American Dream, which was really just the climbing of the
social ladder. This created a vacuum where many individuals did not care about important events
or politics, just parties, socializing and working their way up. Although West and East Egg may
have seemed physically similar, A more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every
particular except shape and size. (Fitzgerald 5) This helps the reader to understand the
differences of the social classes through the setting. The Vally of Ash signified the poor people in
the country at the time, and New York City represented the corruption occurring during the time.
Many people were striving for the so-called American Dream, yet ignoring all the collateral
damage in their path. The settings in The Great Gatsby showcased these social class issues
perfectly, explaining the difference between the classes and the characters ever present strive to
achieve the American Dream.

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Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1925. Print.