That’s my Middle West…the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark….I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house….I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all – Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby. Chapter 9, Nick realizes that none of them are from the East with its quick-paced culture, but are from the rural Midwest. In the East they had been giving into the indulgences of the wealthy upper class without thinking of the consequences. They were unable to handle it, resulting in the death of a great man.