he men and women who stoop from the security of their well-ordered business and social worlds to play with him and spend his money. (7)This bit of information clearly re-emphasizes the point that outward appearances can be deceptive.Gatsby’s vague past proves through deceptive appearances one can brought from nothing to an quite artifical hero.The Valley of Ashes; where George and Myrtle Wilson reside, is another place where exteriors can be rather deceptive. On first glance, the valley of ashes appears to be just that, a heap of ashes in a garage, but they actually represent the gray, dismal environment of the Wilson’s – the life and class to which they belong (Miller 106). This “wasteland” becomes the primary backdrop against which tragedy is played out, and which causes it to take on a greater significance. Fitzgerald returns here again and again, bringing his characters by its “spasms of black dust”(Miller 106). Myrtle tries to escape this world of bleakness in her city apartment, where she resides as Tom Buchanan’s mistress. It is here that she tries to maintain a facade of “wealth and respectability.” The valley of Ashes soon shatters this facade, along with her gaudy expectations of entering Tom’s world (Lehan, “Sugar Lumps and Ash Heaps; George and Myrtle Wilson” 93). Fleeing to escape her husband, Myrtle rushes hoping to be saved from her hell by someone who she believes to be Tom, only to be crushed by the machine, “her life violently extinguished as she knelt in the road, the blood mingling with the dust” (Lehan, “A Son of God” 39). Ironically, it was Daisy who extinguished the life of Myrtle, but her husband is deceived of this fact due to Tom.As the valley of ashes represented the environment of the Wilsons, the grand homes of Gatsby and the Buchanans represent the conflicting social status and importance of outwar...
