Fitzgerald uses the Midwest in Gatsby to highlight and justify his disapproval of the amoral New York folk he meets. Ironically, his idea of the Midwest is as romantic and illusory as Gatsby's is of life in general, which Nick scorns.
Connecticut Hall, Yale University Old Campus - Credit: Ragesoss, Wikimedia Commons
Yale is one of the most prestigious universities in the United States and has many distinguished alumni.
Originally a men-only college, it began admitting women in 1969.
French Hotel de Ville - Credit: Fanny Schertzer
Normandy is a province of north-western France, which would have been familiar to Fitzgerald from his years with Zelda in Europe.
During World War Two, Normandy was the location of the D-Day landings which led to France's liberation.
The Hotel de Ville is the town or city hall.
In the days before widespread commercial aviation, international travel was undertaken on vast ocean liners. The Cunard and White Star Lines were rival shipping companies.
Cunard, an Anglo-American company, was founded in 1840. Among its famous ships were the RMS Lusitania, launched in 1907 and sunk by a German torpedo missile in 1915, and the Mauretania, launched in 1906.
The White Star Line was a British shipping company founded in 1869. Its most famous ship was the ill-fated RMS Titanic, which sank in the North Atlantic in April 1912.
White Star merged with Cunard in 1934.
The Saturday Evening Post is an American current-events magazine founded in the early 19th century. By the 1920s it was the most widely circulated magazine in America. It famously launched the career of Norman Rockwell who was first hired to illustrate the cover in 1916.
