Approaches of the Study

33 from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season ‖ p. 5. East Egg and West Egg represent two different kinds of rich people, where one place is for people who come from rich family and another place is for people who struggle to become rich. It can be said that West Egg, where Nick chooses to live, as well as the Middle West, from where Nick comes, people fight for what they have, and try to reach their goals. In this case, Nick comes from a Middle West family who works hard for several generations to become wealthy and well- known to rise in society from low. On the other hands, East Egg families are traditionally wealthy and their members have become lazy and prejudice after an easy life away from hard work and indulging in pleasures only. According to Saunders 1990, society is stratified into social classes which are upper, middle, and lower class. Social classes are hierarchical groupings of individuals that are usually based on wealth, educational attainment, occupation, income, or membership in a subculture or social network. It can be reflected also in the novel because Fitzgerald tries to divide the social class where one area is less fashionable than the other areas. Both areas consist of middle and upper classes, but one area is still considered higher than another area in economy. People from the higher class tend to do things which actually only make them happy: Why they came east I don‘t know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I d idn‘t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy‘s heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game p. 6. 34 This quotation denotes that Tom and Daisy, the married couple of the novel, often go abroad with no reason and gather with people with the same class. However, Tom and Daisy finally come to East Egg and have a very big mansion to live together. It shows that Tom comes from a rich family. He is accustomed to live as a rich person. He can be the representative of the people, who have been rich since they were kids, and after they become adults, their habits to live in a rich situation still exist. It can be seen also from Myrtle‘s sister: ―No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We went by way of Marseilles. We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started but we got gypped out of it all in two days in the private rooms. We had an awful time getting back, I can tell you. God, h ow I hated that town‖ p. 34. They seem to be accustomed to go somewhere with no reason just to make them happy and after that they will come back again. It happens also because they have a good social relation since they were rich people. They usually have many connections with people from outside of their area so they want to meet them or they do it only for fun. According to Ownby 1999, there is another aspect of hedonism that can be connected also with the culture in this novel. It can be seen in a character named Myrtle , Tom‘s mistress, where she tends to have a shopping habit which is shown in this sentence ―… copies of Town Tattle lay on the table together with a copy of Simon Called Peter, and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway‖ p. 29. She can be seen as the representative of women at her time: ―The phenomenon of celebrity was a fairly new concept to American society in the 1920‘s and she embraced this as a form of luxury‖ Lindberg, 2014, p. 18. She said that in this era there were increasingly powerful consumerism society PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI