Summary
Halfway between West Egg and New York City sprawls a desolate plain,
a gray valley where New York’s ashes are dumped. The men who live
here work at shoveling up the ashes. Overhead, two huge, blue, spectacle-rimmed
eyes—the last vestige of an advertising gimmick by a long-vanished
eye doctor—stare down from an enormous sign. These unblinking eyes,
the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, watch over everything that happens
in the valley of ashes.
The commuter train that runs between West Egg and New
York passes through the valley, making several stops along the way.
One day, as Nick and Tom are riding the train into the city, Tom
forces Nick to follow him out of the train at one of these stops.
Tom leads Nick to George Wilson’s garage, which sits on the edge
of the valley of ashes. Tom’s lover Myrtle is Wilson’s wife. Wilson
is a lifeless yet handsome man, colored gray by the ashes in the
air. In contrast, Myrtle has a kind of desperate vitality; she strikes
Nick as sensuous despite her stocky figure. Tom taunts Wilson and
then orders Myrtle to follow him to the train. Tom takes Nick and
Myrtle to New York City, to the Morningside Heights apartment he
keeps for his affair. Here they have an impromptu party with Myrtle’s
sister, Catherine, and a couple named McKee. Catherine has bright
red hair, wears a great deal of makeup, and tells Nick that she
has heard that Jay Gatsby is the nephew or cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm,
the ruler of Germany during World War I. The McKees, who live downstairs,
are a horrid couple: Mr. McKee is pale and feminine, and Mrs. McKee
is shrill. The group proceeds to drink excessively. Nick claims
that he got drunk for only the second time in his life at this party.
The ostentatious behavior and conversation of the others
at the party repulse Nick, and he tries to leave. At the same time,
he finds himself fascinated by the lurid spectacle of the group.
Myrtle grows louder and more obnoxious the more she drinks, and
shortly after Tom gives her a new puppy as a gift, she begins to
talk about Daisy. Tom sternly warns her never to mention his wife.
Myrtle angrily says that she will talk about whatever she chooses
and begins chanting Daisy’s name. Tom responds by breaking her nose,
bringing the party to an abrupt halt. Nick leaves, drunkenly, with
Mr. McKee, and ends up taking the 4 a.m. train
back to Long Island.
Analysis
Unlike the other settings in the book, the valley of ashes
is a picture of absolute desolation and poverty. It lacks a glamorous
surface and lies fallow and gray halfway between West Egg and New
York. The valley of ashes symbolizes the moral decay hidden by the
beautiful facades of the Eggs, and suggests that beneath the ornamentation
of West Egg and the mannered charm of East Egg lies the same ugliness as
in the valley. The valley is created by industrial dumping and is therefore
a by-product of capitalism. It is the home to the only poor characters
in the novel.
The undefined significance of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s
monstrous, bespectacled eyes gazing down from their billboard makes them
troubling to the reader: in this chapter, Fitzgerald preserves their
mystery, giving them no fixed symbolic value. Enigmatically, the
eyes simply “brood on over the solemn dumping ground.” Perhaps the
most persuasive reading of the eyes at this point in the novel is
that they represent the eyes of God, staring down at the moral decay
of the 1920s. The faded paint of the eyes
can be seen as symbolizing the extent to which humanity has lost
its connection to God. This reading, however, is merely suggested
by the arrangement of the novel’s symbols; Nick does not directly
explain the symbol in this way, leaving the reader to interpret
it.
The fourth and final setting of the novel, New York City,
is in every way the opposite of the valley of ashes—it is loud,
garish, abundant, and glittering. To Nick, New York is simultaneously
fascinating and repulsive, thrillingly fast-paced and dazzling to
look at but lacking a moral center. While Tom is forced to keep
his affair with Myrtle relatively discreet in the valley of the
ashes, in New York he can appear with her in public, even among
his acquaintances, without causing a scandal. Even Nick, despite
being Daisy’s cousin, seems not to mind that Tom parades his infidelity
in public.
