Economic Locations In The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby locations play an extremely large role in the telling of the story. They can indicate a character’s economic standing or make a poignant statement about the society of the 1920s. The three main locations in The Great Gatsby are the Valley of Ashes, the Eggs, and Manhattan. Each location sheds light into the various lifestyles of those that live there and how Fitzgerald perceives their actions and behaviors. Fitzgerald uses the Valley of Ashes to show the world how the pursuit of the American Dream will inevitably end in pain and suffering. Fitzgerald describes the valley as a desolate and dreary place with “ash-grey men” who are “crumbling through the powdery air” (Fitzgerald 27). These men are the embodiment of the lower classes …show more content…
Manhattan is the perfect example of this. The first time the reader goes to Manhattan they are reading about Tom’s affair with his mistress, Myrtle (Fitzgerald 30) and how they and Nick all become intoxicated to the point that the story becomes unclear and spotty at best. On the second visit to Manhattan, the reader then joins Nick in meeting Meyer Wolfsheim, a notorious gangster in The Great Gatsby who fixed the 1919 World Series and sells illegal alcohol (Fitzgerald 78). Fitzgerald creates Wolfsheim to represent Arnold Rothstein, a real 20th century mobster who supposedly fixed the 1919 World Series and illegally sold alcohol during the prohibition. Wolfsheim represents an evil within Manhattan that will never leave. Manhattan is also a place of conflict. At one point “Tom Buchanan broke [Myrtle’s] nose with his open hand” (Fitzgerald 41) over a fight about his wife. Later Tom has a heated argument with Gatsby and his wife Daisy that would most likely have ended in an exchange of blows between Tom and Gatsby if not for the intervention of