Plot Summary
Chapter 1 of The Great Gatsby introduces Nick Carraway, a young man from a prominent Midwestern family who moves to West Egg, Long Island, in the spring of 1922 to learn the bond business. He rents a modest bungalow sandwiched between lavish mansions, one of which belongs to the mysterious Jay Gatsby. Nick drives across the bay to East Egg to have dinner with his second cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, whom Nick knew at Yale. At the Buchanans' opulent Georgian Colonial home, Nick also meets Jordan Baker, a cool, self-possessed young woman he later recognizes as a famous golfer.
Over dinner, Tom launches into a discussion of a racist pseudoscientific book, but the conversation is twice interrupted by telephone calls from Tom's mistress in New York. Jordan quietly reveals Tom's affair to Nick. After dinner, Daisy confides in Nick on the veranda, recounting the birth of her daughter and her wish that the girl would be "a beautiful little fool." Nick senses the insincerity behind Daisy's performance. As he leaves, the Buchanans ask about a rumored engagement Nick denies. Back in West Egg, Nick catches his first glimpse of Gatsby standing alone on his lawn at night, arms stretched toward a distant green light across the water.
Character Development
Nick establishes himself as a tolerant, observant narrator shaped by his father's advice to reserve judgment. He is an outsider among the wealthy, honest enough to recognize the performance around him yet drawn in despite himself. Tom Buchanan is introduced as physically imposing, restless, and domineering—a man whose peak came at twenty-one on the football field and who now grasps at pseudointellectual ideas to assert superiority. Daisy is charming and theatrical, her low, thrilling voice compelling attention, but Nick detects a fundamental insincerity beneath her emotional displays. Jordan Baker is aloof and self-contained, a modern woman whose athletic discipline sets her apart from the languid Daisy. Gatsby appears only as a silhouette reaching toward the green light—mysterious, solitary, and yearning.
Themes and Motifs
The chapter establishes the novel's central tension between old money and new money, embodied in the geographic divide between East Egg and West Egg. Tom and Daisy represent inherited wealth and social privilege, while Gatsby's ostentatious mansion signals a different kind of fortune. The American Dream surfaces in Nick's hopeful move east and in Gatsby's outstretched arms. The theme of moral decay beneath social glamour emerges through Tom's affair, Daisy's performative sadness, and the hollow sophistication of the dinner party. Fitzgerald also introduces the motif of vision and observation—Nick watches, listens, and judges even as he claims to withhold judgment.
Literary Devices
Fitzgerald employs first-person retrospective narration, with Nick writing from a point after the events, coloring every observation with hindsight. Foreshadowing pervades the chapter: Nick's early reference to "what preyed on Gatsby" and "foul dust" hints at tragedy, while the green light at the chapter's close becomes the novel's most iconic symbol of unattainable desire. The wind imagery in the Buchanans' drawing room—curtains billowing, women seeming to float—creates an atmosphere of beautiful instability. Fitzgerald uses juxtaposition throughout: West Egg against East Egg, Nick's small bungalow against Gatsby's mansion, Daisy's charm against her insincerity, and Tom's physical power against his intellectual pretension.