About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land.
Chapter 2 · Narrator
Context
The opening sentence of Chapter 2, introducing the valley of ashes as a geographical and symbolic space between the wealthy communities and New York City.
Analysis
The personification of the motor road as 'hastily' joining the railroad and 'shrinking away' from the wasteland establishes the valley as something even inanimate infrastructure wants to avoid. This anthropomorphization of the road suggests a collective social desire to avert one's eyes from the consequences of industrial capitalism. The valley's location 'halfway between' the world of wealth and the city of ambition makes it literally the hidden cost of the American Dream, the thing one must pass through but refuses to acknowledge.
How to Use in Essay
Use for essays on Fitzgerald's symbolic geography, the hidden costs of wealth, or how the novel's physical spaces encode moral and social meanings.