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The Great Gatsby . Chapter 1 By: Rebecca, Shayne & Kesley. Summary. The narrator of The Great Gatsby is Nick Carraway whom he is also casted as the book’s author.
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The Great Gatsby • Chapter 1 • By: Rebecca, Shayne & Kesley
Summary • The narrator of The Great Gatsby is Nick Carraway whom he is also casted as the book’s author. • The chapter begins with Nick commenting on himself, saying that he had learned to reserve judgement about other people from his father because if he holds them to his own moral standards, he would misunderstand them. • In the summer of 1922, Nick had just arrived in New York to join in the bond business and he had also rented a house on West Egg. • He also introduces West Egg as home to the “new rich” and the East Egg as home to the “old rich”. • Nick graduated from Yale and has many connections on East Egg.
Summary • One night, he drives out to East Egg to have dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom Buchanan. • Upon arriving, Tom greets Nick on the porch. Inside, Daisy lies on a couch with her friend, Jordan who is a competitive golf player. • Tom tries to interest the others in a book called The Rise Of The Colored Empires which expresses racism. • Tom was interrupted with an incoming phone call from his lover from New York. Daisy hurriedly follows him. • After an awkward dinner, Jordan goes to sleep and Tom and Daisy hint that they would like for Nick to take a romantic interest in Jordan. • When Nick arrives at his home in West Egg, he sees Gatsby, whom he did not know who he was yet, stretching his arms towards the green light at the end of a dock.
Characters in Chapter 1 • Nick • Gatsby • Tom • Jordan • Daisy
Nick Carraway • He is the narrator of the book. Nick is a young man from Minnesota who, after being educated at Yale and fighting in World War I, goes to New York City to learn the bond business. • Honest, tolerant, and inclined to reserve judgment, Nick often serves as a confidant for those with troubling secrets. • After moving to West Egg, a fictional area of Long Island that is home to the newly rich, Nick quickly befriends his next-door neighbor, the mysterious Jay Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is told entirely through Nick’s eyes; his thoughts and perceptions shape and color the story.
Jay Gatsby • The title character and protagonist of the novel, Gatsby is a fabulously wealthy young man living in a Gothic mansion in West Egg. • He is famous for the lavish parties he throws every Saturday night, but no one knows where he comes from, what he does, or how he made his fortune. • As the novel progresses, Nick learns that Gatsby was born James Gatz on a farm in North Dakota; working for a millionaire made him dedicate his life to the achievement of wealth. When he met Daisy while training to be an officer in Louisville, he fell in love with her. • Nick also learns that Gatsby made his fortune through criminal activity, as he was willing to do anything to gain the social position he thought necessary to win Daisy.
Tom Buchanan • Daisy’s immensely wealthy husband, once a member of Nick’s social club at Yale. • Powerfully built and hailing from a socially solid old family, Tom is an arrogant, hypocritical bully. His social attitudes are laced with racism and sexism, and he never even considers trying to live up to the moral standard he demands from those around him. • He also has no moral second thoughts about his own extramarital affair with Myrtle, but when he begins to suspect Daisy and Gatsby of having an affair, he becomes outraged and forces a confrontation.
Jordan Baker • Daisy’s friend, a woman with whom Nick becomes romantically involved during the course of the novel. • A competitive golfer, Jordan represents one of the “new women” of the 1920s—cynical, boyish, and self-centered. • Jordan is beautiful, but also dishonest: she cheated in order to win her first golf tournament and continually bends the truth.
Daisy Faye • Daisy stands in stark contrast to her husband, Tom. She is a very frail and diminutive person that labors at being shallow and laughs at every opportunity. • Though she breezily remarks that everything is in decline, she does so only in order to seem to agree with her husband. • As a young woman in Louisville before the war, Daisy was courted by a number of officers, including Gatsby. She fell in love with Gatsby and promised to wait for him. • However, Daisy harbors a deep need to be loved, and when a wealthy, powerful young man named Tom Buchanan asked her to marry him, Daisy decided not to wait for Gatsby after all. Now a beautiful socialite, Daisy lives with Tom across from Gatsby in the fashionable East Egg district of Long Island.
Themes • Violence • Violence is a key theme in The Great Gatsby and is mostly embodied by the character of Tom. As an ex-football player, he uses his immense physical strength to intimidate those around him. Tom Buchanan vulgarly exploits his status: he is grotesque, completely lacking redeeming features. Daisy describes him as a “big, hulking physical specimen,” and it is seen that he mainly uses his size to intimidate and dominate others.
Themes • Class • The societies of East and West Egg are deeply divided by the difference between the people who have “new money” and the people who have “old money”. Gatsby is “new money” which means he only recently began to earn his large sums of money. He tries desperately to fake status, even buying British shirts and claiming to have attended Oxford in an attempt to seem as if he is part of “old money”. Ultimately, it is class that separates Gatsby and Daisy, which cements Daisy’s relationship with her husband, Tom who is from the same class as she is.
3 Significant Quotes • “I hope she’ll be a fool - that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” • Daisy spoke these words as she describes to Nick and Jordan her hopes for her daughter. This quote reveals a glimpse into Daisy’s character. Daisy is not a fool herself but is the product of a social environment that does not value intelligence in women. She describes her own boredom with life and seems to imply that a girl can have more fun if she is beautiful and simplistic. She herself thinks that being a “beautiful fool” is what men expects of women and this is her mindset on how to get past tough situations. This is also an excuse for her to live a luxurious life as she expects Tom to provide for her.
3 Significant Quotes • “It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.” • This shows that Daisy’s voice can be described as being full, not just of money, but of promises. There’s something about the description of the voice that tells the listener/reader that wonderful things are on the horizon. Daisy’s voice is irresistibly seductive and all the other characters are drawn to her because of it.
3 Significant Quotes • “A single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.” • The green light is a complex piece of symbolism in the book. The obvious reason is that the green light represents where Daisy is at and his longing for her. However, the green light means so much more, Daisy is just part of it. The green light represents all his wants in life which include: wealth, success, acceptance and Daisy. And no matter how much the wealth or materialistic possessions he has, he still never feels complete. Even with a large house full of people partying and seeking his attention, he still longs for Daisy. So to possess the green light, that is the ultimate combination he longs for.
Thoughts About The Chapter • The first chapter of The Great Gatsby gives an introduction to the narrator which is Nick and his personality in his point of view. • It also introduces the East and West Egg. • It makes the reader want to know more about Gatsby because of Fitzgerald’s mysterious portrayal of him towards the end of the chapter.
