The Great Gatsby

in discussing east egg and west egg, nick states that they are totally dissimilar. how do they differ?

in chatper 1

Asked by
Last updated by jill d #170087
Answers 1
Add Yours

From the text:

Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals — like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end — but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.

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.

The West Egg is home to old money and respected names..... the difference between the two is social status rather than wealth.

Source(s)

The Great Gatsby