rhys

Nick as a narrator is very likeable, turning his attention to extraneous detail into a poetic and readable form. ‘‘Ten o’clock’ she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling’. He is often funny and makes what could have been a very tense dinner (Tom getting a call from his mistress, the casual racism, Jordan being generally intimidating) into something much less ominous. ‘As for Tom, the fact that he had ‘some woman in New York’ was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book.’

Daisy is sarcastic and funny – obviously more intelligent and humane than her husband, which makes you question why she is with him. Her ‘everything’s terrible – god I'm so sophisticated’ speech is done convincingly and then, after waiting for his reaction, she looks at Nick with ‘an absolute smirk on her face’, mocking her husband in a way to dry for him to understand - '...as though she had asserted her membership in a secret society to which she and Tom belonged.' She is obviously unhappy in the relationship. 

‘Tom was god knows where, I woke up with an utterly abandoned feeling, I asked right away if it was a boy or a girl. The nurse told me it was girl, and so I turned my head away and wept’ - Nick tries to comfort her and she immediately reverts to sarcasm and goes on ‘in a convinced way’. Hard to tell when she’s being serious, she masks her true feelings by trying to be funny as seen in her interactions with Nick. Unsure about her character after only the first chapter.

Tom is typically ignorant – racist, sexist (not unusual attitudes for an upper-class white man at that time.) When he says Jordan’s family ‘oughtn't let her run around the country this way’ Daisy questions  him ‘coldly’, suggesting that she is actually quite forward thinking and doesn't agree with many of his views, though she probably often pretends to for the sake of keeping him happy.

The ending of the chapter gives us a glimpse of Gatsby, him reaching out towards the light at the end of the dock, and in this brief encounter the whole foundation upon which Gatsby’s character is based is summed up. His yearning, for Daisy, or for the status he desperately wishes he had inherited.