The Great Gatsby - Chapter 1 Summary and Analysis

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Here is a summary and analysis of The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1.

Great Gatsby Chapter 1 Script

Hi there Old Sport!

The story of Gatsby is written by an individual named Nick Carraway who turns out to accidentally be Gatsby neighbor during the summer of 1922. He introduces himself in the mostly conventional way of sharing where he’s from and family background and all that.

Nick does tell us that he is “inclined to reserve all judgments” which doesn’t turn out to be entirely true, but at least externally makes him something of a sounding board for people who need to be heard without being judged.

Nick has recently come home from fighting in World War I – what he calls the “delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War.” Once he’s back from the war, the Middle West where he’s from seems “like the ragged edge of the universe” and he decides to go out East to New York. But he also tells us that he came home after living in the East for only a few months – so something happened out there during the summer of 1922 that makes him say, “I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.”

But in Chapter 1 we do get a few of these privileged glimpses as he begins to describe his encounter with his cousin – Daisy – and her husband – Tom Buchanan. The Buchanan were incredibly wealthy, but something very important about them – and the story as a whole – is where they live. Nick describes two “eggs” that, if you look at a map, look nothing like eggs at all but are two loosely ovular peninsulas: West Egg and East Egg. West Egg Nick tells us is “the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them.” Across the bay between them lies “the white palaces of fashionable East Egg.” What makes one extremely wealthy community different from another? The answer is Old Money. East Egg is more fashionable because that’s where the Old Money families live – West Egg is where the families who have newly acquired wealth reside. This may not make much of a difference to me and you, but ultimately plays a large role in understanding how the story works out.

So the narrative actually begins when Nick describes his dinner at the Buchanans and formally introduces us to Tom, Daisy, and their golfer friend Jordan. Tom is just this massive hulk of a human, making him both richer and physically stronger than everyone else. It’s no wonder why Nick describes him as basically a jerk. But he’s a jerk who is also described as a drifter, who “reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax” and “Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.” Daisy is described as incredibly charming, though Nick senses that there’s a certain superficiality to that charm.

At their house, Nick has an incredibly awkward evening with them both. Not only does he not know them very well, but the entire dinner has hidden tensions and awkward statements that force readers to look carefully at the details of how Tom and Daisy interact. Tom, we learn, has “some woman in New York” on the side, and she calls during dinner! But Nick is clueless about this, which makes us have to read through his narration. There’s also an interesting moment when Nick’s about leave, and Daisy talks about Jordan Baker staying with them, suggesting “I think the home influence will be very good for her.” Right after she says this, she and Tom exchange an awkward glance, hinting that they both know that their home is hardly the right influence for anyone.

Nick’s impression of his visit to Tom and Daisy is that they are rich, bored, and entirely out of touch with life. Both Tom and Daisy seem to lack any definite goal or purpose, and he even says that it feels like Daisy is “in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.”

But the most mysterious character in this chapter is Gatsby himself. Even though he’s the title character, we are only vaguely introduced to him at the beginning and end of the chapter. After Nick returns from the Buchanans’, he sees his neighbor do something very strange: Gatsby appears to be looking out across the water of the bay and stretching out his arm as though reaching for something. And then Gatsby just disappears. Initially Nick told us that Gatsby “turns out alright in the end.” He admires Gatsby for what he calls “an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.”

So there’s definitely much more to learn about Gatsby’s mysterious behavior and what leads Nick to make such an unbridled accolade about him.