In both The Great Gatsby and Death of a Salesman, setting is used to highlight social inequality within American city life. Through descriptions of domestic space, both texts reveal divisions between wealth and poverty and explore how individuals experience alienation within these environments.
In The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway opens the novel by describing his house as being “squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season.” This immediately establishes the extreme wealth of the area in which the novel is set. Nick’s comparatively modest home separates him from the other characters and creates the impression that his story is told from an outsider’s perspective. The verb “squeezed” suggests discomfort and exclusion, implying that Nick does not fully belong in this environment. When contrasted with the “huge” houses surrounding him, the word emphasises how overpowered Nick feels — not necessarily by the buildings themselves, but by the wealthy people who own them.
Nick reinforces this sense of exclusion by describing his house as “an eyesore […] a very small eyesore.” The bluntness of the word “eyesore” highlights how starkly his home contrasts with its surroundings, while “small” suggests feelings of insignificance and not fitting in. Nick’s position as someone who does not quite belong is significant, as it contributes to his role as a narrator who observes wealth from a distance. His outsider status may increase his reliability, allowing him to comment more critically on the world he describes.
There is also an irony in Nick’s role within the novel. Although his house appears insignificant, Nick himself plays a vital role in Gatsby’s life. The contrast between his home and the neighbouring mansions can therefore be read as a wider comment on social inequality, reflecting tensions between wealth and poverty in post–First World War America, the period in which the novel was written.
Similarly, Death of a Salesman uses contrasting imagery to expose inequalities within urban life. In the opening stage directions, the salesman’s house is described as having “towering, angular shapes” behind it, “surrounding it on all sides.” Compared to The Great Gatsby, this description is more overtly threatening. Words such as “towering” and “angular” create an intimidating atmosphere, with “angular” carrying associations of sharpness and violence. This contributes to a semantic field of aggression, which is reinforced by the idea that the house is surrounded on all sides.
This threatening imagery continues with the description of “a solid vault of apartment houses around the small, fragile seeming home.” The juxtaposition of “solid vault” with “small” and “fragile” highlights the temporary and vulnerable nature of the salesman’s house, especially when contrasted with the permanence and strength of the surrounding buildings. This suggests vulnerability within the home itself and reflects how the consumerist and capitalist world represented by the apartment buildings overwhelms individuality and uniqueness.
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