The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby
Chapter One: The story starts off with a personal note by the narrator, Nick Carraway. Carraway came from a prominent family from the Midwest, graduated from Yale and fought in the Great War. After the war and a period of restlessness, he decided to go East to learn the bond business. At the book's beginning, Carraway has just arrived in New York, living in West Egg village. He was going to have dinner with Tom Buchanan and his wife Daisy. Tom was an enormously wealthy man and a noted football player at Yale, and Daisy was Carraway's second cousin. Jordan mentions that, since Carraway lives in West Egg, he must know Gatsby. Another woman, Jordan Baker, is also there. She tells Nick that Tom is having an affair with some woman in New York. Tom discusses the book "The Rise of the Colored Empires," which claims that the colored races will submerge the white race eventually. Daisy talks to Carraway alone, and claims that she has become terribly cynical and sophisticated. After visiting with the Buchanans, Carraway goes home to West Egg, where he sees Gatsby come from his mansion alone, looking at the sea. He stretches out his arms toward the water, looking at a faraway green light.

Chapter Two: Fitzgerald begins this second chapter with the description of a road running between West Egg and New York City. A large, decaying billboard showing two eyes (advertising an optometrist's practice) overlooks the desolate area. It is here, at a gas station, where Tom Buchanan introduces Nick Carraway to Myrtle Wilson, the woman with whom he is having an affair. Myrtle herself is married to George B. Wilson, an auto mechanic. Tom has Myrtle meet them in the city, where Tom buys her a dog. They go to visit Myrtle's sister and also visit her neighbors, Catherine McKee and her husband, who is an artist. They gossip about Gatsby, and Myrtle discusses her husband, claiming that she was crazy to marry him, and how she met Tom. Later, ...