Old money, new money

The idea of and difference between old and new money has to do with more than wealth and lineage. The Great Gatsby uses West and East Egg to personify the difference in lifestyle and attitudes between the two. West Egg, home to the narrator Nick Caraway and the great Jay Gatsby himself, come to represent everything new money and the roaring 20's are about: excess, frivolity, outrageousness, and materialism. New money comes to represent the new lifestyle and social norms that are evolving in America. Drinking, wearing flashy clothes, being untraditional, living life to the fullest: that is what it means to be prosperous in the world of new money. Old money and norms are represented by East Egg, especially in the case of the Buchanan's. Old money is still stuck in traditional ways and attitudes: women are subservient and obedient to men, skirmishes and spats are non-public, refinery and class are essential, lineage is everything. In the world of old money, one is defined by the past; in the world of new money, one is defined by the present and is oblivious to the future.