Summary
The narrator of The Great Gatsby is a young Minnesota man named Nick Carraway. He not only tells the story but also presents himself as the author of the book. He first commented on her, saying that she had learned from her father to abstain from judging other people, because if she kept them to her moral standards, she would not understand them. He describes himself as morally upright and patient. He briefly mentions the hero of his story, Gatsby, saying that Gatsby stands for everything he despises, but he completely frees Gatsby from his usual judgments. Gatsby's personality was "good".
In the summer of 1922, Nick writes, he had recently arrived in New York, where he had moved to work in the bond business, and he rented a house on the Long Island section called West Egg. Unlike the Conservative Egg East Egg, West Egg is home to the “wealthy young,” those who have recently acquired wealth, who have no social contact or refinement of travel within the East Egg set. West Egg is characterized by a rich display of richness and bad taste. Nick's modest home on West Egg is next to the house of Gatsby, a fearsome Gothic beast.
Nick is not like his West Egg neighbors; while they have no public contact and noble descent, Nick is a graduate of Yale and has extensive contacts at East Egg. One night, she is driving to East Egg for dinner with her cousin Daisy and her husband, Tom Buchanan, who was a member of Nick's social group in Yale. Tom, a strong man in a riding suit, greets Nick on the balcony. Inside, Daisy is relaxing on the couch with her friend Jordan Baker, a competitive golfer who yawns as if tired of the environment.
Tom tries to impress others with his book The Rise of the Colored Empires by a man named Goddard. The book promotes racist, white-dominated attitudes that Tom seems to find convincing. Daisy teases Tom with a letter but is interrupted when Tom walks out of the room to pick up the phone. Daisy quickly follows him, and Jordan tells Nick that the call is from Tom's girlfriend in New York.
After an unpleasant dinner, the party breaks up. Jordan wants to go to bed because he has a golf tournament the next day. As Nick leaves, Tom and Daisy suggest that they would like him to have a romantic interest in Jordan.
When Nick gets home, he sees Gatsby for the first time, a handsome young man standing on the grass with his arms outstretched. Nick looks at the water, but what he sees is a green light that may signal the end of the booth.
Analysis
Nick Carraway's ideas and attitudes about the events and characters of the novel are the basis of The Great Gatsby. Writing a novel is Nick's way of grasping the meaning of the story they are involved in. The first pages of Chapter 1 set out some controversies in Nick's view. Although he described himself as patient and judgmental, he considered himself to be a morally upright person, with a sense of “better morality” than most people do. Although Nick has a strong negative reaction to his experience in New York and eventually returns to the Midwest in search of a mysterious place of morality, even in his first period of disgust, Gatsby stands out to him as an exception. Nick highly praises Gatsby, despite the fact that Gatsby represents everything Nick laughs about in New York. Gatsby apparently challenges Nick's traditional ways of thinking about the world, and Nick's struggle to accept that challenge incorporates everything in the novel.
In the East Egg world, an attractive appearance works to cover unpleasant realities. Tom and Daisy Buchanan's marriage seems to have been threatened with silent depression under its sweet spot. Unlike Nick, Tom is arrogant and dishonest, develops racist arguments at dinner and goes on public love affairs. Daisy, on the other hand, tries hard to be modest, even saying that she hopes her baby girl will turn out to be stupid, because women live better lives like good fools. Jordan Baker perpetuates a deep sense of exhaustion hanging over the East Egg: his doubts, loneliness, and infidelity are in stark contrast to his wealth and beauty. Like the Buchanans' wedding, Jordan's splendor embodies the inner emptiness.
Gatsby stands in stark contrast to the people of East Egg. Although Nick still does not know the origin of the green light, and what he stands for in Gatsby, the apparent inner desire in Gatsby's posture and his emotional commitment to it makes him seem almost at odds with the Ivy League mockery set in the Buchanans. Gatsby is Nick’s mysterious person, as Nick does not know his motives, or the source of his wealth, or his history, and the thing he longs for is still far away and not seen as the green light he reaches.
The relationship between geography and community values is an important motif in The Great Gatsby. Each part of the novel is accompanied by a concept that has a theme or type of character. This first chapter introduces two key areas, East Egg and West Egg. Although each is a home of incredible wealth, and although separated by only a small area of water, the two regions are almost at odds with the numbers they support. East Egg stands for breeding, tasting, aristocracy, and entertainment, while West Egg stands for showcasing, brilliance, and good manners for the wealthy young. East Egg is associated with the Buchanans and the monotony of their inherited social status, while West Egg is associated with the luxury of Gatsby's city and the inner drive behind the wealth he has built for himself. Eggs' ineffective reunion in love between Gatsby and Daisy will serve as a catastrophic mistake.