East Egg
Tom and Daisy Buchanan live here.
“Across the courtesy bay, the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water”
“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
A
West Egg
Gatsby and Nick live here.
“Everyone in West Egg is a bootlegger”.
“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,”
A representation of achieving the American dream corruptly
Valley of Ashes
George and Mrytle Wilson live here.
“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.”
“The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour.”
A representation of how the American dream fails those who it was created to inspire hope for.
NYC
“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.”
Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge,’ I thought; ‘anything at all….’