Answer:
The valley of ashes is:
1. It is the industrial section that separates the fashionable West and East Eggs from Manhattan.
Explanation:
Even though the narrator in the novel "The Great Gatsby" never names it, the valley of ashes is most likely the area of Queens, separating Manhattan from the fashionable West and East Eggs. Nick, the narrator, describes it in the following manner:
<em>About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.</em>
Among the themes of the novel, we have social inequality and the corruption of the American dream. The valley of ashes serves as a representative for both. The poor men and women who inhabit this area lead a life so different than the one of the wealthy. Yet, it is thanks to them that the wealthy get to be rich. The factories in the valley of ashes are a result of the industrial boom that makes the upper class even richer. Still, those men and women are looked down on, seen as expendable, as unimportant.
