Saira - Chapter 1

Chapter one is like the foundation of the book, where we have Nick as a narrator setting the scene and the characters. Nicks description on the both the Egg’s, with regard to wealth and social class tells me that maybe Fitzgerald wanted the readers to have a some background information on what could be the main themes for the novel, wealth, power and social class.

Nick is a perfect fit for the narrative voice because he can really easy to connect with the reader and this makes him very likable. The way Nick likes to describe his settings to us, the little intricate and fine details of his surroundings and even of the people and their personalities, makes it much more interesting to read this chapter, especially with Nicks witty comments in between ‘a partial view off my neighbors lawn and the consoling proximity of millionaires’.

Nick starts of the chapter with a very formal and reserved tone, this may have been because Nick was speaking about himself and I've realized that when he speaks about himself his tone seems to be much more cautious, as if he doesn't enjoy speaking of himself.

Then we have Gatsby, the eponymous hero of our novel whom so far has only been mentioned through others, especially through Nick. When Nick speaks about Gatsby his tone seems to enlighten, Nick seems to think of Gatsby as ‘gorgeous’, ‘extraordinary gift for hope’ and he also implies that Gatsby is a kind of person that one will rarely ever meet, this makes me think that Nick must either look up to Gatsby as a role model, he may be a very close friend of Gatsby’s or maybe he’s just in awe of the ‘Great’ Gatsby.

When we arrive at the home of the Buchanan's, it radiates wealth and power. Through Nick we first meet Tom, whom seems to be very dominating, controlling and quite rude as he directly insults Nick by calling him weak and implying that he is immasculine. We are almost told to dislike Tom with Nick’s description ‘hard mouth’, ‘arrogant eyes’ and ‘aggressively forward’ which makes Tom sound almost animistic. Tom is obviously the ‘typical’ white man of the period and therefore it isn't much of a surprise when we find out that he has ‘some woman in New York’.

However, Daisy is the complete opposite to Tom, she’s very carefree and light, which makes you think why are is he even with Tom? Nick description of Daisy as ‘charming’, ‘bright’ and ‘passionate’ make the reader feel like Daisy would be a victim in her relationship with Tom, if anything were to happen. However, sometimes I feel like Daisy tries to play off how clever she actually is and she hides this by acting dull and by agreeing with almost everything Tom says.

‘I woke up out of ether with an utterly abandon feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was girl, and so I turned my head away and wept’ - ‘the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool’ - Nick tries to console her and she immediately changes and goes on ‘in a convinced way’, this makes it very hard to understand Daisy as she plays the character of a dull wife so well, you can’t tell if she’s always acting or if it’s actually her true feelings.

Miss Baker represents a typical 1920’s flapper girl, whom is very tall with small breasts which out of context could almost sound like describing a man. Personally, I found Miss Baker to quite a uncomfortable character because she’s always very stiff with etiquette when she’s around both Daisy and Tom, however as soon as they leave she likes to snoop around the life of others.

At the end of chapter one we see Gatsby in person, after all the character build up on him all we see is his figure, we don’t get to see how he looks, how he speaks and we don’t even know why he was stood out alone in the ‘unquiet darkness’.