Tuesday, May 18, 2010

East Egg vs West Egg

What is the significant difference between the East egg and West egg in the Great Gatsby?  The two represent old money and new money. During this time old money was considered to be more respected then new money was. East egg is the more fashionable where the people who have had money for almost their entire lives reside, while West egg is the newer money, maybe less respected in these times. Tom and Daisy, for example live in the Easy egg, being that they have grown up with money in their lives. The people living in the west egg are the people who have worked hard for their own money.  They haven't just had it handed down to them because their older ancestors were wealthy like many of the people living in the east egg. The West egg is also considered to be more moral then the East egg. Both of the "Eggs" are based off of money, however they are separated by the of which they obtained it. 

Apparently the two "Eggs" serve as many different metaphors, one of which i found from this website. I thought it was pretty interesting, what they came up with...
http://www.ovtg.de/3_arbeit/englisch/gatsby/eastwest.html 
Here's what it said!

In the book The Great Gatsby, East Egg and West Egg are used as metaphors for the East and the Middle West. While the "aristocrats" Tom and Daisy live in East Egg, the newly rich Gatsby lives in West Egg. Even though Gatsby shows off with his wealth and tries to fit in the "aristocratic" society, the fact that he is living in West Egg, shows that the distance between East and West does not become smaller, because West Egg stays the “less fashionable of the two”

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