The Great Gatsby's Morality And Culture

Peoples’ morality and culture is defined as differing from continent to continent, country to country, or even as small as state to state. At times, the ethics differ even between city and city, but for the two Eggs, the difference lies between mere neighbors. On one morning as Nick steps outside his house, Gatsby appears in his Rolls-Royce which Nick describes as “a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns” (64). Just observing Gatsby’s vehicle implies Fitzgerald’s view of the East Egg’s new-money residents as everyday and lacking in social graces. The Rolls-Royce itself is a stereotypical rich-man’s car, in the 1920s selling at 400 thousand dollars in today’s

Additionally, from observing the gypsy’s unattended enjoyment, the concept of obtaining so much money that worries will float away is also implied. Aside from East Egg, the young-and-careless, comes the opposing old-aristocracy West Egg. When roaming within the Buchanans’ angel-white home, Nick wanders into a room he illustrates as “gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug” (8). The immense purity, elegance, and taste this single room exhibits reflects exactly the West Egg’s charisma. Fitzgerald’s skilled imagery projects colors of flowing white and red further symbolizing both chastity and lust. Contrasting the East and West uncovers added moral diversity between the two; one with carelessness and carpe diem, and the other with carefulness and