The Great Gatsby Chapter 1

The Great Gatsby: Chapter 1, pg 1-21

The chapter starts out with Nick Carraway talking about himself and how his father's words," Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me,' just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had,"(Gatsby 1) led to him reserving his judgements because they may be misguiding. He had been in the "Great War" and had decided to go into the bond business and settled in West Egg, east of New York. He drove to East Egg to have dinner with Daisy, second cousin once removed, and Tom whom he knew from Yale. Nick meets Miss Baker whom he later learns is the competitive golfer, Jordan Baker, and  that Tom may have an affair with another woman in New York. After dinner, Nick returns home in West Egg and sees Mr. Gatsby who is looking towards the ocean and Nick glances at the ocean to see a green light which he believes to be the end of a dock.


Tom Buchanan:
"but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game."(Gatsby 6)

Qualities-"He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body-he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage-a cruel body." (Gatsby 7)
"His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he like- and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts." (Gatsby 7)
"Well, these books are all scientific,' insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. 'This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things." (Gatsby 13)

Tom's role in this story is to portray the kind of rich society in that current time. Tom is seen as wealthy from the way he lives from the quote," he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that." (Gatsby 6) He is seen as a racist with his white supremacist views and as a dishonest man because of his affair with another woman in New York.

Quote:
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."(Gatsby 1)
The significance of this quote shows that there are those who can be labeled as the "haves" and others who are labeled as the "have-nots". Nick is shown here to be part of the "haves" but he should consider that others have not had the kind of opportunities that were afforded to them as they were for him. There are those who have it harder in life than he does.