East Egg 

and West Egg

The narrator, Nick Carraway, begins the novel by commenting on himself and
giving the description of the geographical setting. The areas of East Egg and
West Egg in Long Island find isolation not just geographically, “separated only
by a courtesy bay”, but more significantly in the way the two societies
contrast.

East Egg is the fashionable group of social elite, also known as "old money" or
people who have always had money. Tom and Daisy represent the 'old
establishment', having lived in the wealthy upper class for most of their lives.
West Eggers are the newly rich; the people who have worked hard and earned
their money in a short period of time. Their wealth is based on material
possessions.

Gatsby, like the West Eggers, lacks the traditions of the East Eggers. He is
considered 'new money', in the sense that his wealth came to him more
recently through his business. Even though Gatsby shows off with his wealth
and tries to fit in the "aristocratic" society, the fact that he is living in West
Egg, shows that the distance between East and West does not become smaller,
because West Egg stays the “less fashionable of the two”.

The distance between the two sides also represents Gatsby's distance from
Daisy which lies across the span of water between their houses – the very
distance between West Egg and East Egg. The barrier between them, then, is
one of class distinctions.

Дидушенко Татьяна, 4 англ. группа