By means of “costly entertainments… The competitor with whom the entertainer wishes to institute a comparison is, by this method, made to serve as a means to the end. He [the guest] consumes vicariously for his host at the same time that he is witness to the consumption of that excess of good things which his host in unable to dispose of single handedly, and he is also made witness to his host’s facility in etiquette” (Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class)
Gatsby’s utilizes the method of grand entertainment to establish and maintain his reputation throughout East and West Egg. The parties are not meant for Gatsby’s leisure, but, rather, to let his guests experience what he portrays as his quotidian life. The exposure to this extravagant lifestyle leaves West Eggers envying Gatsby and leaves East Eggers sufficiently impressed by Gatsby. While, in the eyes of the East Eggers, these parties separate Gatsby from the rest of the West Eggers, still maintained is a social divide between new money and old money that inhibits Gatsby from being an East Egger. While his parties further his reputation and set him apart from West Egg, they will never implant him into East Egg society---a place where Gatsby, no matter how extravagant his parties, where he will perpetually be a guest to another host’s method of achieving “reputability”
Mary--Your paragraph implicitly raises some good questions about Gatsby's status--and what might happen were he to somehow move to East Egg. It does seem as though there is an unbridgeable divide between the two, and that all the money in the world will not get him accepted into East Egg.
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