The hope that anyone can earn success if they work hard enough. The American Dream. It is a fantasy put into peoples head in the 1920’s to give them hope and happiness. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses setting to portray this unrealistic belief in his novel The Great Gatsby. East Egg, West Egg, and The Valley of Ashes, on the surface seem completely different but throughout the novel it shows how these places are not as different as they are originally portrayed. The people living here are all trying to succeed in living their perfect American Dream, but no one has it quite right.
The American Dream states that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, with enough hard work, can achieve their own version of success. By using the setting of East Egg, the American Dream is shown as a false achievement where they have not done anything to get to where they are. Nicks described the Buchanans house on East Egg as “Even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white colonial mansion overlooking the bay.” The Buchanan’s house would have been passed down or at least bought with their ‘old money’. The Buchanan’s would have been very proud of this and would also be accepted by everyone in East Egg because they believe you have to have ‘old money’ to be successful, if you earned most of money recently this would be frowned upon which is completely the opposite of the true American Dream. Near the end of the book Nick revealed how horrified he is about the way the Buchanans live. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and . . . then retreated back into their money . . . and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” They do careless things and hide behind their money so they don’t have to deal with it. Because they are privileged with their ‘old money’ they are use to this and never have to work to attempt to fix it. If they were really living the American Dream they would do whatever they could to fix their situation.
West Egg is an accurate representation of the American Dream being unrealistic and instead of anyone being able to achieve it with hard work the only way to achieve it is corruptly. “I lived in West Egg – well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is the most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them.” East Egg and West Egg are both very wealthy places to live, but Nick describes West Egg as the less fashionable one meaning they did not earn all of their wealth legitimately. The East Eggers look down on the West Egg people because they were not born with their money or status which just shows how wrong the society around American Dream is. Tom Buchanan said while in New York “Everyone in West Egg is a bootlegger.” Suggesting he thinks West Egg is full of people who’s hard work for their American Dream is actually illegal behaviour. Tom represents all of East Egg when he accused West Egg which shows how the East Eggers won’t accept the West Eggers because of factors they were born with and can’t change. This is completely wrong and is not what the American Dream represents.
The Valley of Ashes is a representation of the American dream failing those it was created to inspire hope for. The Valley of Ashes is a depressing industrial area of Queens between West Egg and Manhattan. “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.” No ones preferred place to be is in The Valley of Ashes, even the motor road seems to want to get away and escape. The Valley of Ashes is corrupt and is full of people who have spent their whole lives living here and as a result break down. Everyday for them is the same thing which drains them mentally and physically. “I’ve been here too long. I want to get away. My wife and I want to go west.” Everyones dream is to earn enough money to get away and live in a nicer place more comfortably. But no matter how hard they work or how much. money they earn they still can’t get away. Although some still have hope, the reality is the American Dream has failed them.
In conclusion F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed the unrealistic idea of the American Dream through setting. The places he used were East Egg, West Egg, and The Valley of Ashes. None of these places successfully lived out the American Dream properly. They were either too wealthy to begin with, not wealthy enough or tried to achieve it by doing wrong. This shows how hard to American Dream is to achieve and how unrealistic it is.