In The Great Gatsby, there are two small islands, East Egg and West Egg, which are "identical in contour, separated only by a courtesy bay"(The Great Gatsby, P. 5). Among them, the West Egg is "the less fashionable of the two"(The Great Gatsby, P.
5), on which live Nick and Gatsby. Across this courtesy bay "the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water"(The Great Gatsby, P. 5), on which Tom and Daisy live their carefree and leisure lives. The two Eggs, in a sense, represent two camps of social class, while the bay symbolizes a fathomless and unbridgeable gap between the two.
Although Gatsby is rich enough to possess a grand mansion "rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season"(The Great Gatsby, P. 5), his residence situates on the West Egg with regret. The East Egg is the symbol of wealth, power and status. It is also the dream of Gatsby.
Beyond the bay, Gatsby's desire, Gatsby's illusion, Gatsby's hope, and Gatsby's lost love ---Daisy--- is there. To cross the bay and melt with the people he admires on the East is an everlasting attraction to him. To cross the bay means you are the wealthy, you are the renowned, you are the powerful, and you are the best.Gatsby desperately aspires to establish his share on the East Egg. In order to surmount the bay and realize the dream ever haunting, Gatsby attempts different routes: he holds a lot of luxurious parties, open to people whoever on the East Egg, no matter invited or not; he purchases hydroplane, hungry for encountering Daisy one day, he even launches frontal attack to Tom daringly to regain Daisy. Once a time the dim ''green light'' seems to within his reach, Gatsby has intimate contact with Daisy and seemingly regains Daisy' heart, but an accident "intentionally" brings Gatsby into an impasse and leads him to a tragic death.
To Gatsby, the bay is for good insurmountable because the East Egg is a cast-iron castle to keep off the intruders. It is doomed to be a mirage to Gatsby, at his fingertip, but always out of his reach. The bay is insurmountable because Gatsby is no match of Tom. Gatsby lives in a fantastic age, an age full of dream, full of opportunity and creativity, in which everyone finds enormous possibility in life to fulfill his ambitions through efforts, diligence and opportunity. But it is also a time of hollowness, vacuity, corruption, decadence with deep-rooted social discrimination and class division, exerting great influence on individual's life.
Gatsby is one of the luckiest to make quick and big fortune, but he is just a nouveau rich, not a weighty rival of Tom and destined to be marginalized by the upper class. Gatsby innocently thinks he could climb the social ladder, earns the pass to upper society, gets the membership of the rich club, regain his lost love and easily bridge the bay between himself and Daisy with his profuse money. He naively believes himself competitive and attractive with the help of money and mistakenly launches an attack on Tom.Truly, wealth is an essential prerequisite to enter the uppertendom, but birth is another more essential and more important component of the bridge. With humble background and poor education, Gatsby's entry is inevitably blocked.
Those people benefiting from his extravagant and luxurious parties freely, at the same time, show suspicions and scorns toward Gatsby. To them, Gatsby is just a free lunch ticket, a card taken advantage of, no more withal. Actually Gatsby is never equipollent to Tom and is impossible to cross the bay. He is certain to be surrounded by his guests' gossips and maneuvered by them.Money alone is not powerful enough to secure Gatsby's social status. Without noble birth, Gatsby is certain to be betrayed and deserted by Daisy at crucial point.
The bay is never surmountable in that Gatsby could never win Daisy. It is impossible for Gatsby to get the true heart of Daisy. The two belong to different social classes. It seems that Daisy once fell in love with Gatsby, they were dating, they had close touch, but all these were underpinned by Gatsby's deliberately giving Daisy a sense of security, letting her believe that he was a person from much the same strata as herself.When war approaches and acts as a touchstone, Daisy doesn't stand the test.
She chooses Tom, a man with ''a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his position''(The Great Gatsby, P. 151). In Gatsby's eye, Daisy, wealthy and beautiful, represents a way of life that is remote from Gatsby's. Gatsby is deeply attracted by Daisy, but it is a fatal attraction. It is attractive and desirable but forever out of his reach.
Gatsby struggles to realize his dream, he tries to step into another social group, but his attempt ends with failure, tragically.Gatsby, over-confident, is ultimately certain to be devoured by the invisible but powerful social force. Gatsby is great, he pursues his dream with perseverance, he challenges a powerful social group far outweighing him with fearlessness; Gatsby is also tragic, he misjudges himself, overestimates himself. He doesn't make out what really attracts Daisy. Gatsby's faithfulness, naivety, and romanticism are unavoidably strangled by Daisy's frivolity, sophistication, and practicality.
In a sense, Gatsby could never find himself a position on the East Egg even he makes a successful landing on the East Egg because he is not the people of that stratum. Myrtle is another ambitious person who attempts to surmount the bay. Taking advantage of her vivacity, her lively nature, she seeks to escape from her own class and dreams of turning over a new leaf in her life. But she never succeeds in her attempt to find a place for herself in Tom's class.
Once she attempts to defy Daisy's position by demanding the right to mention Daisy's name, Tom breaks her nose with his open hand.To Tom, Myrtle is just a mistress, a garniture, an ornamental vase, and a plaything. It is impossible for her to gain Tom's true love. Thus her ambition to possess Tom, her attempts to break into the group to which Tom belongs are doomed to fail.
Myrtle is the lower class people, vulgar and beneath mentioning. When she was run down by Daisy's carelessness, Tom, leaving their past love affairs behind, instinctively exculpates Daisy and swinishly launches counterattacks to his rival in love, making Myrtle a useful and forceful tool. In time of crises, the rich naturally stand together against all outsiders.Moreover they defeat the outsiders easily, with tact and carelessness. Gatsby and Myrtle are sacrificial victims. They are weak people but over-confidently to challenge the authoritative privileged.
They think their weapons, (Gatsby's money and Myrtle's personal glamour) are powerful to launch battles against the rich, to break through the stronghold, to take their share of the realm. But they end with failure and tragedies. Tom and Daisy are dominant group, they have consolidated social status, they possess invisible control over others, they not only have enormous wealth, but honorable birth.They are living in a camp, an unchallengeable, impenetrable and indestructible camp. They were people with inherited and accumulated ascendancy.
They have the privilege to be careless and irresponsible. ''They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made"(The Great Gatsby, P. 180-181). At critical point, there are a natural intimacy and class instinct between Tom and Daisy, which unite them tightly.Gatsby, Myrtle, and George all die so that the Buchanan way of life can go on, their sense of superiority can be sustained, their arrogance can remain inviolate(Lehan, 1992).
Gatsby, Myrtle are tragic in that they don't have a clear realization of the snobbish, apathetic and hierarchical society, in which social discrimination and class divisions are pervasive, controlling people's destiny. Wild extravagance of Gatsby's parties could not earn him a mourner, while ash and dust build a grave for Myrtle.
