The Role Of The West In The Great Gatsby

“This has been a story of the West, after all” (Fitzgerald 18__). Even though The Great Gatsby is entirely set on the East coast, the West plays a large role in influencing the characters’ thoughts and actions. The novel is about the contrast of the East and West, and the tragedies that occur when the two mix. It is at the end of the novel, when Nick says that the entire story was about the West, that he realizes that the characters could only survive and live successfully and peacefully in their original home, as opposed to the corrupting environment of the East. In this moment, Nick understands for the first time that though his story is set on the East Coast, the western background of his companions is the cause for each and every misfortune

By saying what he does, Nick infers that everything that occurred had been influenced by each person’s Midwestern upbringings and how it affected them once they came East. Nick is commenting on the cultural divide between the East and West, and the toxicity of combining the two. Each character came East to flee something bad from their pasts, ranging from rumors of homosexuality, to life without a loved one, and to the bad publicity from an affair. However, the culture shock of the East is what caused each downfall in the novel. Nick implies that New York is corrupting and that the characters would have been much better off staying put in the

On page (PAGE NUMBER), Nick says “Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life (PAGE NUMBER).” Because each character is raised in the West, they are unaccustomed to the culture of New York when they arrive, and it is because of their lack of knowledge of Eastern morals that they became corrupted and lead horrific lives. In the end, everyone escaped the East in some way because it was so morally ravaging. Tom and Daisy accomplish this by running away, while Nick does so by going back home to Minnesota, and Gatsby escapes through death. In summation, every person involved with the story of Gatsby is unable to function as normal in Eastern society, due to their Western upbringings, and it causes a great deal of conflict and despair throughout the course of the