Eastern Desires
The roaring twenties. Cars were the things to have and
a party was the place to be. Everybody wanted something.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's book, The Great Gatsby, describes the
events that happen to eight people during the summer of 1922.
In the book, people went from west to east because something
they desired was in the east; unfortunatly in the end those
'somethings' were unattainable.
...I decided to go east and learn the
bond business. Everybody I knew was
in the bond business so I supposed it
could support one more single man. All
my aunts and uncles talked it over as
if they were choosing a prep school
for me...
Nick went to the east to make money. He was from the
midwest, and even though his family was doing pretty well in
the money department, Nick wanted to make his own money. By
going from the midwest to the east, Fitzgerald shows Nick's
desire to have more money.
After spending the summer in the
east and seeing how money affects people, he decides to go
back west.
I see now that this has been a
story of the west, after all-Tom
and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and
I, were all westerners and and
perhaps we possessed some deficiency
in common which made us subtly
unadaptable to eastern life.
In other words, after finding out what the east was really like,
Nick lost his interest in being in the east and returned to the
west.
Gatsby came east looking for another type of money -
Daisy. Gatsby and Daisy had last seen each other about five
years before, when they were dating. Then Gatsby had to go
to war. While he was away in war, Daisy met Tom and then
married Tom. Daisy had always...