“GATSBY BELIEVED IN THE GREEN LIGHT” 89 Across the river, in East Egg, lives his cousin Daisy, who is married to Tom Buchanan, a friend of Nick’s from college. Nick observes the two of them, along with their friend, Miss Jordan Baker, as they exchange conversations in which nothing is really said. Uncomfortable truths, such as Tom’s affair with a mechanic’s wife, are known but ignored by everyone, even when she calls the house during dinner. People are as fake as the smiles they give everyone. Real relationships are hollow, and true joy is abandoned for monetary indulgence. Between these two gloriously fake communities of West Egg and East Egg is the true picture of existence, a place Fitzgerald terms the valley of ashes: “a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.” A billboard stands above the valley, advertising the business of eye doctor T. J. Eckleburg. A giant pair of yellow glasses fills the billboard and effectively watches over the valley, seeing past the façade of East and West Egg. This image is the common cover for The Great Gatsby novel, and symbolic in demonstrating people’s inability to truly see each other or their own lives. Gatsby’s Grandeur: “I didn’t want you to think that I was just some nobody.” When Nick attends his first party at Gatsby’s mansion, he realizes he is one of the few who were actually invited. Everyone else just came: “Once there they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby, and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with an amusement park. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all.” As Nick meets Gatsby and gets to learn about him over that summer, he discovers that he is trying to get back into the life of his former love, Daisy Buchanan. All the parties he throws are in a hope that she will attend one of them. Gatsby had met Daisy before the war and they fell in love, but while Gatsby was away, Daisy thought him dead and decided to marry wealthy Tom Buchanan. Now, Gatsby seeks to win her back.
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