SETTINGS: The Eggs

Question 1

“Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans.”

Answer 1

• CH1
• “Palaces” - likens them with royalty and this idea of old money.
• “White” - the metaphor of wealth.

Question 2

“It was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden.”

Answer 2

• Gatsby tries to imitate the old money with the design of his house.
  It is clearly emphasised in the quotation that this is only an imitation, though. He can never gain the wealth he aspires to have, so he consumes in order to act like he has that old money wealth. Fake it until you make it.
• “Factual” - this suggests it is researched, an allusion to Gatsby’s obsession with old money.
  Representative of how West Egg is new money, and they will never be old money. Even if they have the means to imitate, they are still imitating.
• “Thin beard of raw ivy” - this idea of “thin” and “raw” goes back to this idea of the money being new, as the ivy hasn’t had time to grow and develop.