Themes in The Great Gatsby

Nick Carraway is a young Midwesterner who has recently moved to New York in the summer of 1922. He sets himself up in a modest home located in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by people who are newly rich, having made their fortunes too recently to have established social connections and therefore are prone to garish displays of wealth to try and attract social connections. Among those that put on extravagant displays of wealth is Nicks new neighbor Jay Gatsby, a mysterious person that holds legendary parties every Saturday night. Nick, however, is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at Yale and already has social connections in East Egg, which is the fashionable area of Long Island and home to the already established upper class. 

Nick drives out to the home of his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, who is an erstwhile classmate of Nick’s from Yale. Here Nick is introduced to Jordan Baker, cynical, yet very attractive young woman with whom Nick eventually begins a romantic relationship. From Jordan Nick discovers that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Soon after this revelation, Nick finds himself in New York City with Tom and Myrtle at a gaudy party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair. Myrtle begins to tease Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose.