The Great Gatsby
Nick – East vs. West – Money
If the grass is greener on the other side, you can bet the water bill is higher. In the Great Gatsby this is true, because money makes a difference. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has a range of characters (Gatsby, Tom, Daisy…), motifs (the green light, the car crash…) and themes (Can you recapture the past? What are we going to do with ourselves…) but I will focus on only on character and tie him to a single theme and a single motif. The character is Nick and he relates very well to Money as a motif and East vs. West as a theme. By using several quotes from the chapter 1-5 I will explore this thesis more in depths.
What brings Nick to the East? After nick graduated from New Heaven he participated in the Great War and he enjoyed the counter-raid so much that for him the West was no more interesting, even though his family is very old money in the west. So he came east to get into the bond business since he already had connections. “Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after the various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two. P.9” This quote shows that nick is old money, his dad is ready to finance him for a year because they are rich and he can rely on his parents money but this quote also this quotes shows that he left the West thinking he would never go back and it foreshadows that he will come back to the West because the East is not made for him. This fits in the theme East vs. West because people go to the East thinking of a better life, but they always will come back to the West. This quote gives us information about Nick’s monetary situation, and opinions on the West and East.
In the first paragraph Nick tells us a lot about his life, so we can get a lot of information out of it. And at the same time Nick contrasts the difference between the West and the East. For example; “I lived at West Egg, the – well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. P.10” This quote shows the West is a less fashionable place than the East. The East/West egg is a reference to the East and West of America. And here the author uses them to show the difference between those two places. He also says that the west is more sinister then the east and that is because the East is new money so there are more new homes, buildings, schools, etc. But West is old money and there are old family mansions and so on, which ties with the motif; Money and the theme; East vs. West. In this quote Nick is being judgmental as usual, which tells us about his personality.
Nick can be very judgmental, he always judges people and talk about them but never him, this quote is about Jay Gatsby; “His voice was solemn, as if the memory of that sudden extinction of a clan still haunted him. For a moment I suspected that he was pulling my leg, but a glance at him convinced me otherwise. P.64”. This quote shows Nicks over judgmental character. He talks about every single detail even Gatsby’s reactions. It relates to money as a motif because he talks about extinction of a clan. When you talk about a clan you talk about old money, very old money. And this says that Gatsby is the only one left of the clan so he is the owner of very old money. And clans comes from the west, once again this is about how West is mainly old money and east is new money.
Nick is old money and he tells us that he is part of a clan; “The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch.” He is so money that one of his ancestors is a Duke. This quote is once again about how the west life of Nick is very old money. There are no such things as clans on the East only the west so we know that Nick is from the west. This quote is from chapter one. I chose many quotes from chapter one because it is one of the two only chapters where nick talks about himself.
So Nick is very old money and a very judgmental person. He is from the west even though he does not like the west, he moved to the East thinking he will never go back but he ended up going back. Money is something important about Nick because that is the reason all of this is happening because of Money. And Nick is very judgmental about people coming from West or East, or Old or Young money. Money, Nick and East vs. West all tie up together somehow. But maybe the author made it this way because Nick is a reflection of himself.
