The Great Gatsby: Chapter 1 (Reader's Journal)

The novel begins with Nick Carraway, the protagonist, narrating the story. We know immediately that the story has already taken place and that Nick is recalling the events in chronological order, recounting them by way of related memories.

Nick comes from a middle class family that values high morality and social justice. He is an educated man that has moved to the East to seek his fortune. Nick settles in West Egg, rather than East Egg and although both Eggs have grand houses, East Egg is home to ‘’old money’’; families that have lived for generations within comfortable means. West Egg on the other hand, was home to ‘’new money’’; people whose wealth was recently earned, as well as to working class people such as Nick. The two Eggs are separated by a lake.

The main centre of Chapter one is when Nick visits the East Egg to see his cousin and her husband, Daisy and Tom. Tom is an overwhelming figure, and is clothed in riding gear: a sport commonly associated with wealth and dominance. Clearly from Nick’s descriptions, Tom is not a sensitive or gentle man. Instead, he is powerful and harsh, not caring about society or etiquette. He has function and privilege, and that is how he wants it to remain. The notion is amplified at the dinner table, when he cuts his wife short numerous times. Furthermore, when he chooses to discuss politics, he unravels he is both judgemental and demeaning of people based on race and their class.

Daisy and Jordan Baker, are placed in a setting that resembles a dream. This underlines their incapability to deal with reality. Both young women are dressed entirely in white (suggesting purity, or ignorance perhaps), and are overrun by the vast emptiness of the room in which they are sitting (suggesting a lack of something such as certain intellect). As the chapter continues and they start to talk, the superficial behaviour becomes even more pronounced. Daisy seems she does not care about anything in the real world, by fulfilling her own whims. Jordan furthers the sense of worn-out mundane hanging over East Egg: her boredom (constant yawning), cynical remarks and dishonesty are immensely mismatched with her wealth and beauty. It is vaguely relative to the Buchanans’ marriage that Jordan’s outer glamour covers up an inner void: The marriage of Tom and Daisy Buchanan seems haunted by a silent plead for more to life, than what its attractive appearances care to tell.

Lack of vigour and/or a ‘zest’ for life can also be found towards the end of the chapter, when both Daisy and Tom try to force a rumour of marriage, and a liking to Jordan, onto Nick. This occurs shortly after Nick gains word of Tom’s affair.

The evening therefore ends with Nick in discomfort and disgust, particularly of what has become of his cousin. It also concludes with him observing his neighbour, Gatsby, who walks to the edge of the lake and stretches out his hands towards a green light. This mysterious act is what prevents Nick from introducing himself to Gatsby.