Text Connections

The text-to-text connection between The Great Gatsby and West Side Story isn't immediately apparent, but it definitely exists. In both stories there is a rivalry between two factions, the Jets and the Sharks in West Side Story, and East Egg and West Egg in The Great Gatsby. At the end of both novels, the death of a friend makes the main characters realize the ridiculousness of the tension between the two groups. In response to this realization, Nick Carraway leaves for the west while the main characters of the West Side Story reconcile their differences.

A second connection can be found when Fitzgerald first describes Nick meeting Tom Buchanan.

Tom asks Nick if he had “read 'The Rise of the Colored Empires' by this man Goddard?”(12). This is referring to The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy by Stoddard, where Stoddard postulates that the collapse of the white world empire would be due to population growth of non-white races. By Fitzgerald including this text-to-world connection, he paints a clearer image of the personality and hospitality of Tom Buchanan. The former being cruel, and the latter being non-existent.