East Egg, New York East Egg is a fictional neighborhood located on Long Island in New York City, New York. East Egg is located directly across the bay from West Egg; it is also a peninsula and extends out into the Long Island Sound.
The action of The Great Gatsby takes place along a corridor stretching from New York City to the suburbs known as West and East Egg. West and East Egg serve as stand-ins for the real-life locations of two peninsulas along the northern shore of Long Island.
Long Island's East Egg is a home for so-called “old money.” Like any place where people with big money would live, this area is exceptionally luxurious and almost exclusive. It is where Tom and Daisy Buchanan live. East Egg, in New York, is located outside the big city and faces the neighboring area, West Egg.
The Great Gatsby's East Egg and West Egg: A Look into the Real-Life Inspiration
Where are the real East and West Egg?
East and West Egg are Cow Neck and Great Neck, respectively, two peninsulas of Nassau County that border Manhasset Bay. Cruising through this body of water is a lesson in all of the things you should and shouldn't do, should you ever design a dwelling the size of the White House.
The Valley of Ashes became another significant part of the setting. Though it rested next to West Egg, travel through the Valley of Ashes was necessary for getting into the city from either East or West Egg.
The Gatsby home doesn't actually exist, but Long Island historians say Fitzgerald was renting a house in Great Neck, Long Island, when he was inspired to write The Great Gatsby. To get a taste of the Gatsby life and times, you can visit and stay in the Oheka Castle in Huntington, Long Island.
Fitzgerald set his masterpiece in the fictional bayside villages of West Egg and East Egg, which seem to geographically correlate to the real-life communities of Great Neck (West Egg) and Port Washington (East Egg).
Tom is magnitudes of order wealthier than Gatsby. Note, in the initial party scene we discover that Gatsby's library is full of “blank” books: nice spines no substance (metaphor anyone). Gatsby does have…. shirts—so many shirts.
The Great Gatsby is set in real-life New York City and the surrounding areas. Gatsby, the Buchanans, and Nick Carraway live in East Egg and West Egg, Long Island (inspired either by Great Neck, or by Westport, Connecticut, where Fitzgerald lived briefly).
Daisy Fay Buchanan is a fictional character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. The character is a wealthy socialite from Louisville, Kentucky who resides in the fashionable town of East Egg on Long Island during the Jazz Age.
East Egg represents the old aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich, the valley of ashes the moral and social decay of America, and New York City the uninhibited, amoral quest for money and pleasure.
How is East Egg described in The Great Gatsby Chapter 1?
East Egg represents breeding, taste, aristocracy, and leisure, while West Egg represents ostentation, garishness, and the flashy manners of the new rich.
How is New York City described in The Great Gatsby?
Here Nick characterizes New York City as an exciting, stimulating place where secret, scandalous relationships can get lost in the noise of the city. To Nick, the anonymous people on the city's bustling streets are part of a “constant flicker” that notably also includes machines.
Similar to West Egg's location, East Egg's location was also based on a real place in New York City called Manhasset. Manhasset is a community in New York that was settled in 1680 and grew quite quickly due to it being served by the railroad.
East Egg is a village in Nassau County, Long Island, New York. Located across a small body of water from West Egg, East Egg was a very wealthy community during the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties, and it was known as the home of the "old money" families.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (left) partly based the character of Jay Gatsby on his wealthy neighbor Max Gerlach (right). The character's obsession with Daisy Buchanan was based on Fitzgerald's romantic pursuit of Chicago heiress Ginevra King.
Kevin Roose, for New York Magazine, calculates that with the low profit margin nature of the bootlegging business. If Gatsby had kept all his assets in cash he would have been worth only $1.25 million in 1922 — the year the book takes place.
Jay Gatsby is 32 years old when he is shot to death in his swimming pool. His obsession with Daisy Buchanan led him to claim that he was behind the wheel when his car struck and killed Myrtle Wilson (who just happened to be Tom Buchanan's mistress).
Answer and Explanation: In The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway and Daisy Buchanan are related; they are second cousins once removed. Moreover, Nick had met Tom, Daisy's husband, in college.
The West Egg is the "less fashionable" side of Long Island where Gatsby and Nick live. The East Egg is the "fashionable" side of Long Island where the Buchanans and other "old money" people live.
Another important minor character in The Great Gatsby is a man that Nick Carraway refers to as "Owl Eyes". Described as "a stout, middle-aged man with enormous owl-eyed spectacles," Owl Eyes is obsessed with the library in Gatsby's home.
