Jay Gatsby s Impossible Dream
Sydney C. Chae
Mrs. Neal
Junior English
20 January 2015
Jay Gatsby's Impossible Dream
Many symbols are incorporated throughout The Great Gatsby. As the story begins, these symbols are slowly introduced and start to show meaning as the story progresses. The characters Nick, Gatsby, Daisy, Pam, Tom, Jordan, Myrtle, and Wilson all give these symbols meaning by instilling them throughout the novel. The message that the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is trying to tell us readers is how the American Dream is unattainable. This message is portrayed by the East and West Eggs, the green light, and the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg.
One of the most important symbols in the novel is class and social standing. It is like a barrier for almost every character. East and West Eggs act as a symbol of this by its physical makeup. Tom and Daisy live on the East which is far more refined and consists of people with more money and a higher social status. East Egg also represents the “old money.” Nick and Gatsby are on the West, which is for people who don't have any real standing, even if they have money. The West Egg represents the “new money.” “I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.” (6) Here, Nick says that money isn't the only thing that some people are born to. Some people are naturally just nicer and more honest: they have more "sense of the fundamental decencies." But does Nick believe that poor people can be born with these fundamental decencies, too, or do you have to be rich to have natural class? “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. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for
Mrs. Neal
Junior English
20 January 2015
Jay Gatsby's Impossible Dream
Many symbols are incorporated throughout The Great Gatsby. As the story begins, these symbols are slowly introduced and start to show meaning as the story progresses. The characters Nick, Gatsby, Daisy, Pam, Tom, Jordan, Myrtle, and Wilson all give these symbols meaning by instilling them throughout the novel. The message that the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is trying to tell us readers is how the American Dream is unattainable. This message is portrayed by the East and West Eggs, the green light, and the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg.
One of the most important symbols in the novel is class and social standing. It is like a barrier for almost every character. East and West Eggs act as a symbol of this by its physical makeup. Tom and Daisy live on the East which is far more refined and consists of people with more money and a higher social status. East Egg also represents the “old money.” Nick and Gatsby are on the West, which is for people who don't have any real standing, even if they have money. The West Egg represents the “new money.” “I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.” (6) Here, Nick says that money isn't the only thing that some people are born to. Some people are naturally just nicer and more honest: they have more "sense of the fundamental decencies." But does Nick believe that poor people can be born with these fundamental decencies, too, or do you have to be rich to have natural class? “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. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for