The Great Gatsby Doesn’t it always seem as though rich and famous people, such as actors and actresses, are larger-than-life and virtually impossible to touch, almost as if they were a fantasy? In The Great Gatsby, set in two tremendously wealthy communities, East Egg and West Egg, F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays Jay Gatsby as a Romantic, larger-than-life, figure by setting him apart from the common person. Fitzgerald sets Gatsby in a fantasy world that, based on illusion, is of his own making. Gatsby’s possessions start to this illusion. He lives in an extremely lavish mansion. “It is a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one