Great Gatsby Web Site

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The Great Gatsby
Setting/Geography

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   F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic The Great Gatsby is not set in just one location. From Long Island to Chicago to Detroit, pertinent action takes place all over the United States. These locations in the 1920s, however, were nothing like they are in modern times. If one considers the phenomenal technological breakthroughs that have occurred in modern times, one can begin to appreciate how much the following modern cities have changed from the era that the novel takes place.

New York City

   Years ago, New York City was a small-scale version of the bustling metropolis that it is today. The 1920s was a time of great change and innovation and a town of "roaring music, gaudy entertainment and perpetual prosperity" (Arakian and Smith n.p.).

    New York City is composed of five different sub-cities, known as "boroughs." The five boroughs are Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. In The Great Gatsby, Nick, Myrtle, and Tom most likely go to Manhattan on their excursion, as Manhattan is the "original New York" (Climo). Manhattan is the home of skyscrapers, subways, Fifth Avenue, Greenwich Village, theaters, museums, and concert halls. Even in the 1920s, buildings as high as 66 stories stretched to the sky. The subway, originating only a decade earlier, was growing and becoming a staple in NYC transportation. Tom would be particularly attracted to Manhattan because of the fashionable Fifth Avenue and trendy Greenwich Village, both appealing to the wealthy in general.

    One distasteful aspect of New York City to many of the members of East Egg was the incredible diversity. With a population of over 350,000, those of wealth and the impoverished walked the streets together. Over half of NYC residents were foreign-born or had foreign-born parents. Many immigrants came into the city as soon as they passed through immigration on Ellis Island, located just off the coast of Staten Island. The majority of the population was Roman Catholic, but over 15% was Jewish. Many of the citizens were African American partially due to the fact that Harlem is a division of Manhattan. Racism was at its peak all over the country, but the Harlem Renaissance was earning African Americans some respect in the city.

    As it is today, New York City in the 1920s was on the cutting edge. The new electric lights lit up the city, earning Broadway the nickname of "the Great White Way." Broadway shows were also a new development in American culture. By the mid 1920s, over 250 shows were playing as the theater and cinema were becoming more and more prominent in society.

    New York City, in Fitzgerald's time, was the Mecca of society. As a Harlem jazz musician put it, "There are a lot of apples dangling from the tree of America, but there's only one Big Apple."

Long Island
    Long Island is a suburb of New York City. Bordering Queens and directly across the Long Island Sound from the Bronx, Long Island provided a suburb with easy access to the city while being nestled away in its own quiet corner of the state. Although Queens is technically on the island, what is actually known as "Long Island" begins where Queens ends at the border of Queens and Nassau County.

    The majority of the novel takes place somewhere in the vicinity of Long Island, which is an island off the coast of New York. Divided into the fashionable East Egg and the more common West Egg in the novel, these geographical divisions occur on Long Island today though with different names. West Egg is known now as the Great Neck, and East Egg is commonly known as Manhasset Neck. As far as we can tell, the terms East Egg and West Egg were made up by Fitzgerald and completely fictitious. Jutting into the Long Island sound, the "Eggs" are located on the eastern part of the island.

NYC/Long Island

Source: Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Macmillan, 1992.

    In The Great Gatsby, action is divided between the East and West Egg, but Long Island as a whole is divided into East and West Long Island. West Long Island, where the Eggs are located, is a suburban area while East Long Island is primarily rural.

    Although the average summer temperature in Long Island is only 73 degrees, Long Island is known for its miles of ocean beaches. In the 1920s, prominent members of society began to build mansions and summer homes all over the island. Mansions were particularly common place in the towns of Sand Point, Port Washington, Glen Cove and Mill Neck, all of which neighbor the East and West Eggs. Although portrayed as tasteless and gaudy in the novel, those that lived on the West Egg were still generally well-to-do members of the middle class.

Biloxi

    Located on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico in Southeast Mississippi, Biloxi is a port city that prospered in the 1920s and continues to grow today. In Fitzgerald's time, Biloxi was one of the few successful towns of Mississippi, a state that was struggling with poor farmland and an insufficient work force. Biloxi is the second largest city in the entire state, and one of the South's chief gulf ports.
    Characterized by sultry summers, mild winters, and cool Gulf breezes, Biloxi has an all around pleasant climate that made it a resort area at the beginning of the twentieth century. The only exception to the enjoyable climate is the occasional hurricane that ravages the coast. Fortunately, hurricanes are relatively rare.

    Mississippi in the 1920s was a hotspot for racism and religion. Because of its location in the Deep South, there was a considerable population of African Americans. The entire black population continued to be treated cruelly after the Civil War and well into the 1920s. The paradox in this situation is the fact that Mississippians were typically very religious, with over half being Southern Baptists, and another fourth being made up of Methodists. Presbyterians, Catholics and Episcopalians made up the majority of the remaining fourth, with a sprinkling of Jews in several of the cities. Biloxi, however, was made up of a homogeneous community. The wealthy chose to build summer homes on the Gulf, and others chose to simply stay in one of the many resorts. Most of the upper class, however, merely vacationed in Biloxi. The year round residents tended to be white, working class fishermen and their families. Applied to The Great Gatsby, Biloxi was a pleasurable diversion for people like Tom and Daisy, and a relatively unknown one at that. At one point in the book, Biloxi is mentioned several times, and there is some confusion that it is located in Tennessee. The entire conversation may be found on page 134-135 in the novel.

Detroit

    On the shores of the St. Clair River and the automotive capital of America, Detroit, Michigan in the 1920s was undergoing a growth surge second to only New York City. The invention of the automobile was revolutionizing the country so that in the 1920s cars officially outnumbered carriages and horses on city streets. Cadillac, one of the first car makers, chose Detroit as their manufacturing base, and many other companies soon followed. By Fitzgerald's time, Detroit had begun to be known as the "Motor City." Rushes of immigrants and U.S citizens alike were flooding the city to claim one of what seemed like endless job opportunities. The reference to the "Motor City" in the novel is no coincidence.

   In The Great Gatsby, Detroit is one of the centers of underground activity that Gatsby frequently receives phone calls from. With the tremendous population surge and changes in the era, the underground aspect of Detroit was flourishing.
Chicago

    Known as the Windy City, the Second City, the City that Works, the City in a Garden, the City of Parks, and the City of the Big Shoulders, Chicago is in the Northeast corner of Illinois along 29 miles of the southwest coast of Lake Michigan. A city since the early nineteenth century, Chicago was well established by Fitzgerald's time.

    Major industries of this Midwest city included construction, printing and publishing, food production, industrial and medical research, wholesale and research trade, banking, trading of stocks and agricultural commodities, and advertising. In the 1920s, Chicago was the second only to NYC in size and population of any American city. Chicago was also second in diversity and its population of immigrants. In the time that Nick lived in Chicago, 2 out of every 3 people would have been foreign. Because of discrimination against immigrants, the job market was very good for white Americans like Tom and Nick. The fact that Chicago was second best to New York City may have contributed to Tom ultimately leaving for Long Island.

    Chicago was not only a center of enterprise and culture. During the Prohibition, Chicago had the largest amount of underground activity, most involving bootlegging and gangsters. Gangsters like Al Capone and Bugs Moran made Chicago notorious for illegal activity. Having grown up in such a city, Nick probably knew a lot about the bootlegging business that so many East Eggers were capitalizing on, including Gatsby.

Present Day Chicago

Another Page of Interest

Austin's Setting Significance Page

Works Cited

Arakian, Monique and Carter Smith, III. A Historical Album of New York. Brookfield: Milbrook P, 1993.

Carson, Robert. Mississippi. Chicago: Children's P, 1989.

Climo, Shirley. City! New York. New York: Macmillan, 1990.

Fradin, Dennis Brindell. Michigan. Chicago: Children's P, 1992.

Pfeiffer, Christine. Chicago. Minneapolis: Dillon P, 1988.

Stein, R. Conrad. Chicago. New York: Children's P, 1997.

Stein, R. Conrad. New York. Chicago: Children's P, 1989.

Special thanks to everyone at The City of Biloxi Website

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