What is the main difference between East and West Egg in chapter 1 of The Great Gatsby?

The main difference between East Egg and West Egg is not necessarily the amount of wealth one has, but rather the source of that wealth. Tom and Daisy Buchanan, who live on East Egg, represent the old money faction of society. Both of them come from money, and the families have had money for generations. These people are more refined that those who live on West Egg, like Jay Gatsby. Gatsby represents the new money in society. These people came into their money in the ‘get-rich-quick’ era, and many of them made their money through illegal means. Gatsby and his shady dealings and mobster connections represents the less refined inhabitants of West Egg. 

Compare and contrast East Egg and West Egg in The Great Gatsby.

Further, East Egg is more removed from the city, farther away from the horrible valley of ashes; West Egg is closer.  The residents of East Egg can retire from the hustle and bustle of New York City as well as avoid, for the most part, the sight of the valley -- a constant reminder of the unintended effects of the industry and economy that has made so many East Egg residents so rich.  These folks can escape to their own little world whenever they choose, leaving everyone else to deal with the huge divide between the haves and the have-nots and the corruption of the American Dream. 

Nick alludes to this in the end, when he calls Tom and Daisy "careless people [who] smashed up things and creates and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...."  The wealthy, high-status residents of East Egg are much more able to avoid anything ugly, any truths they don't want to face, i.e. their own responsibility in creating and maintaining a status quo that prevents others from achieving the American Dream.

Compare and contrast East Egg and West Egg in The Great Gatsby.

East Egg and West Egg are two communities differentiated by the socioeconomic status of their residents. The connotations of "East" and "West" are also important here, for although these small towns are in New York, Fitzgerald intended the names and the divisive nature of their reputations to be references to the Eastern United States and the West: bastions of old money and family connections, and new industry and the frontier spirit, respectively. The East and West connotations also conjure up different ideas about morality, another theme in the novel: the West represents more traditional family values and the East a more sophisticated and perhaps decadent way of life. Gatsby's decision to build his grand mansion in West Egg is a tribute to his own Midwestern upbringing, but also a bit of a put down of the snobbery associated with the East. Narrator Nick Caraway says West Egg is "the less fashionable of the two," and describes the way that "the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water."

Fitzgerald, like Gatsby, was enamored of the wealthy classes, those with "old money," and it is a theme in many of his novels and short stories, perhaps nowhere more than in The Great Gatsby. It is also true that West Egg and East Egg are need for the Long Island communities Fitzgerald lived near; he rented a house in Great Neck, just  few mikes from Kings Point (West Egg) and across the bay from Sands Point (East Egg). Fitzgerald was friends with sportswriter Ring Lardner, and the two often drank together. They also spent time socializing with newspaper publish Herbert Swope, who was know for having loud raucous parties. The influence on the novel's characters, setting and events can clearly be seen in Fitzgerald's own life. 

Compare and contrast East Egg and West Egg in The Great Gatsby.

In the first chapter, Nick Carraway, the narrator, says that West Egg is the "less fashionable" of the two, while East Egg is populated with "white palaces [that] glittered" on the water.  Nick describes Gatsby's mansion, a "colossal affair" that attempts to imitate a fancy French hotel with its tower, ivy, marble swimming pool, and massive lawn.  It sounds a bit gauche compared to the home of the Buchanans.  Tom and Daisy's home is "a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay."  Gatsby's home is constructed to look like something it is not, just as the man himself has been.  Tom and Daisy's home doesn't have to prove anything to anyone because its owners don't have to either.  Further, descriptions of Tom's family as "enormously wealthy" and his "string of polo ponies" that he brought with him help to make it clear that East Egg is populated by families which possess old money, the kind of money that one inherits and for which one does not work.  Gatsby has new money, money that has had to be earned and which is, therefore, less valuable in terms of status.

In The Great Gatsby, how do East Egg and West Egg symbolize?

East Egg stands for the established wealth accrued over generations, or, "old money."  It is the home to Daisy and Tom Buchannan, and other very wealthy families of notoriety.  The people who live here have been born into wealth, and have married into wealth.  Before Daisy married Tom, she was not a poor girl by anymeans; in fact, both she and her best friend, Jordan, were aristocrats from Louisville before she married Tom and moved to New York.

West Egg, conversely, stands for the "new money", or, group of people have recently acquired a great sum of money and are trying to fit into the lifestyle of the rich and famous. They are not respected as equals by their counterparts on East Egg.  This is home to Gatsby and Nick in the story.  Nick rents a small cottage there for a modest price, while Gatsby has an enormous mansion for entertaining guests and attracting Daisy's attention. 

If East Egg represents those who have always been wealthy and already have the dream, then West Egg must represent those who have recently found the means (legal or illegal) to buy their dreams and flatter those around them.

How do West Egg and East Egg impact Nick in The Great Gatsby?

Gatsby lives in West Egg, known for its "new" money. People who live there have made their own wealth, which is part of the typical American Dream. Tom and Daisy live in East Egg, and people there have always had money; their parents had money, their grandparents had money, and so on. This wealth is considered more elite, and this group snubs those who are wealthy and who have been forced to earn it themselves.

Nick knows no such wealth himself; he is an outsider who both accompanies Gatsby on his quest to win Daisy's love and spends time with Daisy, who is his cousin (albeit one he doesn't know all that well).

In the end, Nick is fairly cynical of all of it. When considering Daisy and Tom, he comments,

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

He realizes that people like Tom and Daisy are completely out of touch with common human decencies like compassion and empathy. Instead, money allows them to become careless in the way they treat people, and they are "privileged" to be able to leave a path of destruction behind them.

Gatsby fares no better. Possessing ambition daring enough to create an elaborate new life for himself, reaching a pinnacle of success that most can only dream of, Gatsby never fully reaches his own American Dream because Daisy never fully became part of it. Thus, Nick imagines Gatsby's final moments:

He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about.

Gatsby's dream becomes a "grotesque" reality, his ghosts haunting him in his final moments as unrealized ambitions fade away to nothing.

Although people came to Gatsby's parties from both West Egg and East Egg, none of them come to his funeral. Nick is disgusted with a lifestyle that consumes goodness and honesty and leaves it all behind as he returns to the Midwest.

How do West Egg and East Egg impact Nick in The Great Gatsby?

Nick Carraway, who declares himself "one of the few honest people that I have ever known" in Chapter Three becomes "a bad driver" at the end of the novel. Through his association with Daisy and Tom Buchanan and Jordan Baker and Jay Gatsby, Nick becomes "alone in the unquiet darkness" of moral ambiguity. For, he is associated with people who have extra-marital affairs, who have cheated, and who lie about their past. His own behavior is questionable in Chapter Two as he rides in the elevator with Mr. McKee, but is later, after an omission of words

...standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.

Then, Nick returns home on the four o'clock train. In Chapter Four yellow imagery connotes the opulence and decadence of those who attend the parties held at Gatsby's place in the West Egg. Nick states that he "was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment" when Jordan appears. With her, then Nick saunters around Gatsby's garden where they talk with the guests. He observes Gatsby's show of opulence, and he begins to enjoy himself as "the scene had changed before my eyes."

Yet, when he works, Nick feels "a haunting loneliness." Much like those with whom he associates, Nick has become frivolous.  He feels only "casually sorry" for Jordan, who is dishonest. At Gatsby's party, he records the names of the guests on a railroad timetable, names of such sordid characters such as Ripley Snells, who comes "three days before he went to the penitentiary." But, despite the hedonism he witnesses, Gatsby comes "alive" to Nick,

...delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor.

Nick becomes involved in Gatsby's plan to reconnect with Daisy after five years, acting as a panderer, just as he has been involved in the affair of Tom and Myrtle by being in the outer room while the couple are in the bedroom. Clearly, he has become part of a tawdry society with a meretricious appeal that is both "enchanting and repellent" as critic Casie E. Hermanson observes. With equal ambivalence, Nick finds Gatsby deserving of scorn in his illegal activities and his subterfuges, but at the same time, he is admirable in his idealism and heroic efforts to protect Daisy after she hits Myrtle Wilson--

He...turned back eagerly to his scrutiny of the house, as though my presence marred the sacredness of the vigil. So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight--watching over nothing.

 And, so it is this ambivalence which makes Nick become a "bad driver" in the end, one who "drove on toward death through the cooling twilights." His complicity with Tom and Myrtle, Daisy and Gatsby are what make him a "bad driver."

Nick Carraway has come to East and West Eggs as an ingenuous Midwesterner. His exposure to the lies and deceits of the "careless people" like Daisy and Tom Buchanan causes Nick to question some values; but at the same time, he admires Jay Gatsby, stating that Gatsby is "worth the whole damn bunch put together." Through his association with these people, however, Nick has been affected, causing him to become frivolous and one who manipulates truth. However, Nick will return to the Midwest, "the green breast of a new world," the significance of the past, where there are yet values, and not mere materialism and amorality. 

How do West Egg and East Egg impact Nick in The Great Gatsby?

At the end of the first chapter, Nick tells us that he was "confused and a little disgusted" by what he'd seen and experienced at the Buchanan's house.  He was disturbed because he realized there that Tom was cheating on his wife and that she knew it, yet did nothing about it.  Nick was still moral enough to be bothered by the immorality he'd witnessed.  By chapter 9, Nick has seen enough immorality to cause him to move back to the midwest.  He'd become somewhat jaded during the course of that summer and when he realized that he'd become jaded, he was upset enough to want to get away from the immorality of New York. Jordan realized that he was too moral and honest to be happy in New York.  She tells him that she thought that was his "secret pride". He knows that he's lost some of the honesty and he responds that he's 30, which is five years too old to lie to himself.  He means that he's disgusted with the immorality and dishonesty he's witnessed with Myrtle's death and Gatsby's death.

In The Great Gatsby, how do East and West Eggs differ and what is their significance?

East Egg and West Egg are somewhat odd, egg-shaped land formations on Long Island.  Nick says that they are about twenty miles away from New York City and are "identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay [...]."  East Egg is further away from the city and occupied by people like Tom and Daisy Buchanan and their "white palaces"; it was established first, before West Egg, as the spot where the people with 'old money' live.  West Egg was inhabited a bit later, and it is where people like Gatsby live; Gatsby has 'new money,' money that he has earned rather than money that he has inherited from a wealthy family, like the Buchanans.  West Egg is the less prestigious of the Eggs, just as new money (recently earned) carries less prestige than old money (inherited).  It is notable that these two groups are not only differentiated by their value and influence in society but also by their geography. 

In The Great Gatsby, how do East Egg and West Egg residents' attitudes towards money differ?

The people in East Egg and those in West Egg all have a great deal of money, but they have different attitudes about money. The families who live in East Egg have enjoyed wealth for several generations, at least. They take their money for granted because they have always been wealthy. In their world, boasting about having money or showing it off in gaudy ways would be unacceptable and gauche. The Buchanans, for instance, live in a beautiful home on an enormous estate, but their house is one of traditional and understated elegance. 

The people of West Egg are very different in their attitude towards their wealth. They did not grow up with riches or live among wealthy people. They have earned huge amounts of money in short periods of time. Their money is very new to them, and they take pride in displaying what they have achieved. Gatsby boasts of his wealth and shows it off in every way possible. He lives in an enormous mansion that appears to be an imitation of a European hotel. The furnishings of his house, his many cars, his clothes, his staff of servants, his lavish parties--all are displays of his money. Gatsby's behavior emphasizes his nouveau riche status, cause for contempt and disdain among the inhabitants of East Egg.

How is West Egg different from East Egg?

East Egg is the location where the rich people who have family money and prestige, what would be called old money, meaning that the person or persons inherited the money from a previous generation live, therefore, the family has been wealthy for a long time.  For example Daisy and Tom Buchanan live in East Egg because Tom's family is old money.  The dwellers in East Egg would be considered Easterners, cold, indifferent and not to be trusted.

West Egg is where the newly rich settled, bought or built extravagant houses to show off their newly acquired wealth as is the case with Gatsby who is considered new money, which would be regarded with suspicion, as is the case with Tom who suspects that Gatsby has made his overnight fortune through bootlegging.  The dwellers in West Egg or Westerners would be considered honest and hardworking people.

"The difference between East and West Egg is a similar contrast in cultures. The way the characters line up morally correlates with their geographical choice of lifestyle. The Buchanans began life in the West but gravitated to the East and stayed there. Gatsby did as well, though only to follow Daisy and to watch her house across the bay."

In The Great Gatsby, where does Fitzgerald illustrate the differences between East Egg and West Egg, and highlight their moral values, lifestyles, and social relationships?

Fitzgerald does a wonderfully succinct job in describing the moral value systems, lifestyles, and social relationships of East Egg, West Egg, and the Valley of the Ashes in just a few short (but very pertinent) paragraphs.  For example, the absolute best place to find the most information about East Egg and West Egg is right at the beginning of the novel when Nick (the narrator) first speaks of the subject:

Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out onto the most domesticate body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound.  They are not perfect ovals--like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed and flat at the contact end--but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead.  To the wingless  a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.

Nick then goes on to describe how the two aren't similar in regards to setting and character:

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. . . . Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there.

In other words, the filthy rich live in the two Eggs.  However, there is a big difference between them:  East Egg holds the "old rich" who have always known money while West Egg holds the "new rich" who have only recently acquired wealth.

In regards to the Valley of the Ashes, the best place to look for that description is in the Chapter 2 (which serves as a nice foil to Chapter 1).  The Valley of the Ashes is in direct contrast with the Eggs, and is described as such:

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.

Further, the setting highlights the morality of the place and is followed up nicely by the description of a sort of morbid "god" that is Doctor T. J. Eckleburg who watches over the immorality with disgust.

I adore how Fitzgerald masters the art of pinpointing the value systems here by highlighting the spendthrift ways of the filthy rich and the morbidity of the dirt poor, . . . and he does it only through setting.  What a genius!

What are the major differences between West Egg and East Egg in The Great Gatsby?

The primary difference between the two Long Island beach communities known as East Egg and West Egg concerns the class distinction between the two areas. The residents of East Egg hail from old money and have inherited most of their wealth. They have been wealthy for generations and believe they are superior to West Egg residents.

In contrast, West Egg residents are considered the "new rich" and have recently amassed their wealth. While East Egg residents tend to behave more formally and sophisticated, West Egg residents like Jay Gatsby are more ostentatious with their wealth and publicly engage in revelries, which would be considered somewhat lowbrow in East Egg.

The symbolic nature of both areas underscores the characters's backgrounds and highlights the fact that Gatsby will never be accepted into the East Egg community. Even though he is directly across the bay from Daisy, he will never be able to complete his transformation to become a member of East Egg's social elite.

How do you compare West Egg to East Egg in The Great Gatsby?

West Egg and East Egg are two settlements or suburbs, named after peninsulas shaped like "a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay" known as Long Island Sound. So, the two areas face each other across the stretch of water.

West Egg is "the less fashionable of the two." It is the location of the Gatsby mansion and the Carraway cottage. West Egg is where newcomers live - persons hoping to make their fortune, like Nick, or persons trying to convince others that they have made their fortune West Egg's residents aren't what they appear to be, as is the case with mansions like Gatsby's -

a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden.

East Egg is the location of the old money, "the white palaces" of those who truly have achieved substantial wealth. There was nothing imitation about the home of Tom and Daisy Buchanan; it was

a cheerful red-and-white Gerogian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens-finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines

Your introduction could set the stage with a description of the land forms giving the areas their names, then go on to contrast the pretense of wealth in West Egg with the factual wealth of East Egg.

What are the symbols, histories, and significances of West Egg and East Egg in The Great Gatsby?

East Egg and West Egg are both on Long Island, a long, finger-shaped island that juts out to the east of New York City. Depending on where one lives on Long Island, it is about an hour or more drive to get to NYC (longer nowadays because of traffic, of course). In this novel, East Egg is symbolic of old money, the aristocracy, people like Tom and Daisy who convert their garage to a stables, instead of converting the stables to a garage. West Egg, where Gatsby lives, is symbolic of the “nouveau riche” (new rich) – people that have made money, but do not come from “good families.”

Nick comes from the Midwest, associated with good values, and Tom, Daisy and Gatsby live  “back east”- a place where “the valley of ashes” symbolizes the morally decaying influence of the quest for money. Gatsby comes from the west, but he heads east – to pursue his dream of himself and to pursue his love, whom he cannot obtain unless he has money.

There are several symbols. The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock can be seen from Gatsby’s yard. This light symbolizes Gatsby’s dream, a kind of guiding light to Daisy. The “valley of ashes” is a place that the characters must drive through on their way to NYC. It symbolizes the decay of the soul that accompanies the quest for riches. George and Myrtle Wilson live in this ash heap and it robs them of happiness.

The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are another symbol. In reality, this is an old billboard advertising a long defunct optometrist, but these eyes seem to be watching the characters whose lives are playing out in the novel. Some believe they symbolize the eyes of god, passing judgment on the false values of America during Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age.

Historically, the Jazz Age (1920s and 1930s) was a period of time after World War I (Nick returns home from being in the Army, and Gatsby was also a soldier in the Army). People were pursuing the American Dream – getting ahead, rags to riches. There was an upper class, a lower class and really no middle class quite yet. The rich led frivolous but meaningless lives, going to parties and playing polo. Fitzgerald critiques the emptiness associated with the pursuit of riches. Nick tells Gatsby that he is worth more than the whole lot of the people that live on East Egg. Gatsby believed it was possible to achieve his dream – accumulate enough wealth to win back the girl of his dreams who married someone else, someone of her own class. Gatsby obtains riches but he fails to get the girl.

In The Great Gatsby, how did the people of East Egg and West Egg fare during the Great Depression? Did they lose all their money?

East Egg and West Egg were not real places. They were Fitzgerald's fictional Long Island villages that he modeled after some areas of Long Island that did exist and with which he was familiar. The story takes place in 1922, just as the Roaring 20s really took off. Money was plentiful, old money and new money, as well.

Based on American history, if the people of East Egg and West Egg had existed, they surely would have felt the shock waves from the economic crash of the Stock Market in 1929. No doubt, many would have been wiped out financially, just as many millionaires and other wealthy people lost their fortunes at that time. Others, however, probably would not have lost everything, depending upon the stability of their fortunes and investments. In the 1920s market crash and the Great Depression that followed in the 1930s, many wealthy Americans suffered not at all, and in fact, continued to add to their financial holdings.