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What Does West Egg Represent In The Great Gatsby

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The locations of East Egg, West Egg, show the differences between old and new money, and how each can exemplify the American Dream. Fitzgerald used the atmosphere to represent more than just a location, but add a deeper meaning to the novel and make it “seem longer than its length of fifty thousand words”(“The Great Gatsby”). Fitzgerald uses the settings to represent something, adding significance to the places visited in the novel. By making the two locations of West and East Egg, Fitzgerald indicates that there is a significant difference between the two of these, “not just in style but in what might be called moral geography, between the East and West people”(Bruccoli.) The location of New York’s East Egg, the more wealthy and fashionable …show more content…

One way we see differences between East and West Egg is the use of symbols. The symbols “establish that the central characters believe in an American Dream that offers than limitless freedom, wealth, and power and enables them to buy the love of a woman who personifies their aspirations”(Roberts). Gatsby uses the symbol of the green light across the bay to represent his longing for the American Dream, and for Daisy. Gatsby stares wishingly at the green light from West Egg, looking across the water to the light on Daisy’s dock in East Egg. The light is “nepature lament for the futility of American optimism”(Daisley). The green light shows the hope that remains inside all Americans, the “longing for something that is just beyond reach for his or her life”(Baker). This green light on East Egg reflects the longing Americans have for something greater, in hope that they will eventually achieve it. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us”(Fitzgerald 152). The green light is a symbol that all Americans believe in, as Gatsby stares at it from West Egg, a place of desiring

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