This is a 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 ash-gray men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.
Chapter 2 · Narrator
Context
Nick describes the desolate industrial wasteland located between West Egg and New York City, which the motor road passes through. This is the first time the valley of ashes is introduced in the novel.
Analysis
The valley of ashes functions as a powerful symbol of the moral and social decay hidden beneath the glamour of the Jazz Age. The extended metaphor of ashes 'growing like wheat' inverts the agrarian ideal of America into a nightmarish anti-pastoral landscape. The 'ash-grey men' who are 'already crumbling' represent the dehumanized working class, reduced to the same substance as their environment. The word 'transcendent' is deeply ironic—the highest achievement of this landscape is merely to produce human-shaped figures who are already disintegrating.
How to Use in Essay
Essential for essays on the American Dream's failure, social class inequality, or Fitzgerald's use of setting as symbol. Also useful for discussing the contrast between the wealthy Eggs and the forgotten underclass.