The American Dream is the ideal which offers equal opportunity to any American, allowing the highest aspirations and goals to be achieved. Many people have become obsessed with this ideal throughout time. F.Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ gives the reader a glimpse into the lives of a couple of these people’s pursuit to achieve the American Dream in the 1920’s. A way he does this is by his use of setting and how settings can represent the people trying to obtain the American Dream. In this essay, I will outline the three main settings in the novel and explaining how they relate to the idea of the American Dream.

The first setting is East Egg. The main characters associated with East Egg in The Great Gatsby is Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Their personalities can be described as strong, snobbish, opinionated, and full of vitality. These traits are perfectly depicted when Tom says “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 damn fool to move anywhere else”. This quote represents the snobbish attitude of Tom and the people in East Egg. He says he’d be a fool to live anywhere other than East Egg. It also gives us an insight on the attitude towards the other setting in the novel. As well as Tom and Daisy, the people of East Egg were born into their money and have never known anything different. Their parents and grandparents are the same. The people residing in East Egg are highly educated and sophisticated, another effect of their wealth. A quote in The Great Gatsby that supports this description is when Nick says “Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water”. As well as giving us a location on where East Egg is, it tells us about the glittering water and the white palaces. Using the words palaces and glittering water we get an impressive first impression on East Egg. It shows us the lavish place where these people live. By using Nick to express his feelings, Fitzgerald presents how he feels about the upper class. Using character and setting, Fitzgerald gives us an insight into the lives of the upper class population during the 1920’s.

Our next significant setting in The Great Gatsby is West Egg. This is where the main character in the novel, Nick Carraway, lives. Nick comes from the old money, but decides to live in West Egg. The people who live in West Egg represent new money. These are people who have worked hard and earned their own money. They did not depend on inheriting money and they worked hard. They did not have any high class education and some of them did not even go to university. They just went to work. The people of West Egg are considered less sophisticated and reckless than those of East Egg. This relation between West and East Egg can be shown when Nick says “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.” What Nick is saying here is that he admits that West Egg is condescending to East Egg, but he sees that there is a considerable diversity between the two. Tom Buchanan’s attitude towards West Egg can be expressed when he says that “Everyone in West Egg is a bootlegger”. This quote further explains the relationship between West and East Egg. It shows how people of East Egg look down on the people of West Egg. They assume that they all got their money illegally (though a lot of them did). This can be interpreted as pity as East Eggers did not have to work for their money instead of using all their time to gain their wealth, like the people of West Egg. Fitzgerald recognises the life of West Eggers and the reality on how many of them attained their wealth. He also recognises that no matter how hard the people of West Egg try, they will never reach the status of those living in East Egg. This can be shown by how Fitzgerald narrates the life of James Gatsby.

The last leading setting in the novel is the Valley of Ashes. The Valley of Ashes sits between West Egg and New York. It represents the lower class and the hopeless people that have been left behind in their pursuit of the American Dream and wealth. While the rich indulge in luxuries, these people struggle to financially support themselves and their families. In the novel, there are two main characters living in the Valley of Ashes, Myrtle and George Wilson. George is stuck in the lower class lifestyle whereas Myrtle has an escape in her affair with Tom Buchanan of East Egg. With this affair with Tom, Myrtle consciously takes on a new persona to try fit in with the rich community. This shows how desperately the people in the lower class will try to escape this ideal and that to those born outside of the wealthy class in America, the American Dream is a false promise. The Valley of Ashes is perfectly represented when Nick says “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”. It shows the dimness and hopelessness of this setting. It describes the people when it says “… men who move dimly and already crumbling…”. Fitzgerald uses the valley of ashes as a way to impersonate the lower class of America during this period of time, and the failure of the American Dream.

The people of the 1920’s determined their success by the wealth and happiness they had created despite their position in life. This success was demonstrated by material assets such as cars, houses, clothes, etc, as well as for their social life. Fitzgerald illustrates this with the literary device of setting through out The Great Gatsby. Through this he can critique and judge the society in the 1920’s. He connects these settings through the idea of the American Dream. Giving personal stories on the reality of this ideal, with the successes, and failures it brings.