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Central Themes In Fitzgerald's Of Mice And Men

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Both The Great Gatsby and Of Mice and Men have settings that help to contribute to their central themes of class divisions and the decline American Dream; however, The Great Gatsby’s setting more intrinsically adds to the moral of the story than that of Of Mice and Men. In order to analyze which novel has the most powerful setting it must be made clear that the power a setting can have on a novel is dependent not only on how well it mirrors the plot and characters, but also how effectively it is integrated into the story to become a force that moves the plot and contributes to the theme. Based on this, The Great Gatsby is the superior novel.
The Great Gatsby’s setting helps to prove that not only is there a division between the rich and the poor, but that there are also subsections within the rich which prevent some people from achieving …show more content…

These subsections are characterized by the use of different locations for different groups of people in the novel. The new money is located in West Egg, and the old money is located in East Egg. As the narrator, Nick, describes, “I lived at West Egg, the--well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them” (Fitzgerald 9). This gives a clear description of how the West Egg is viewed to be the inferior side of wealth, as the money was recently made and often flaunted through exorbitant spending. It also shows how those who achieved the American Dream of becoming successful through hard work in the West Egg are still not considered equal to the East Egg, furthering the theme of the death of the American Dream. Another way that the setting divides the two sides of the rich is in the comparison of Gatsby and the Buchanan’s mansions. Gatsby’s is described as “a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in

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