She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented "place" that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village—appalled by its raw vigour that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a shortcut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.
Chapter 6 · Narrator
Context
After the party, Nick interprets Daisy's reaction to the evening. While she enjoyed the movie star and her private time with Gatsby, everything else offended her sensibility. Nick articulates her class-based revulsion toward West Egg's new-money culture.
Analysis
The metaphor of Broadway 'begetting' West Egg upon a fishing village uses sexual language to frame new money as illegitimate offspring—a bastard culture born from the violation of an innocent landscape. The devastating phrase 'a shortcut from nothing to nothing' denies new-money inhabitants any genuine trajectory of progress, suggesting that in Daisy's worldview, wealth without pedigree is circular rather than ascending. The anaphoric 'appalled' intensifies her visceral rejection while the personification of 'fate' herding inhabitants reduces them to livestock.
How to Use in Essay
One of the novel's richest passages for essays on old money's contempt for the nouveau riche, or for arguing that the East Egg/West Egg divide represents an unbridgeable class chasm that dooms Gatsby's aspirations regardless of his material success.