Purpose of the "How do you get to West Egg village?" scene in "The Great Gatsby" In _The Great Gatsby_ , Nick is asked by a traveller, "How do you get to West Egg village?" and then Nick writes that after that moment he felt like an original settler of West Egg. > It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road. > > “How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly. > > I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood. > > And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. > > (F. Scott Fitzgerald, _The Great Gatsby_ , Chapter 1.) What is the purpose of this scene?

It shows that he is becoming habituated to the place: he is no longer a newcomer who needs directions, but an inhabitant who can give them. It inspires a poetic flight of fancy because that means a lot to him.

This is particularly important because the conclusion of the novel is when he decides this is a bad place for him to live, and to move back to the Midwest.