The Great Gatsby Chapter 1 Summary

This chapter opens with a reporter at Gatsby’s door asking him if he had anything to say and wants to interview at random. It is explained that rumors are constantly going around New York about Gatsby. Nick knows mostly all about Gatsby’s personal life so he does not believe many or all of the rumors he has heard. Nick then begins to explain Gatsby’s personal life. It is explained that his legal name is James Gatz. He changed his name when he was 17 when he saw Dan Cody drop the anchor of his yacht into Lake Superior. It is also explained that Gatsby’s parents were “shiftless and unsuccessful farm people”. He actually had attended a small Lutheran college called St. Olaf’s in Minnesota. He only ended up staying there for two weeks then left.

Skipping ahead of where we left off last chapter, chapter 6 starts by giving us more background on Gatsby through Nick. We find out that Jay Gatsby is actually a made up persona from James Gatz, and his actual background seems to be in sharp contrast with that of Jay Gatsby’s. He spent his childhood in Minnesota where he met who seems to have played a major impact on Gatsby’s character, and older man named Cody, who took Gatsby under his wing and essentially brought Jay Gatsby to life. Another downside to Gatsby's American dream is that it has, in essence, stunted his growth, intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally.

In Chapter 1, the narrator introduces himself as Nick Carraway and talks about himself and his father. He describes himself as tolerant but fails to realizes his views are very biased and speaks with pity to those who “haven't had the advantages that you've had,” as his father says. Nick comes from a well-known Mid-Western family, and graduated from Yale (as his ancestors have) in 1915. After fighting in World War I, he comes home restless and decides to learn the bond business. His father finances Nick for a year and Nick lives in a house on West Egg. He talks about West and East Egg. West Egg is the less fashionable of the two, and consists of new money. He lives between Gatsby's mansion and another millionaire. East Egg consists

The Great Gatsby - Chapter 1 Read the beginning of the novel chapter 1 up to page 12 “Tom Buchanan in his riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.” How effective do you find this as an introduction to Great Gatsby. In your response you should pay close attention to voice, language and style. The Great Gatsby was written by F Scott Fitzgerald in 1925, and is set during 1922, a period tinged with moral failure of a society obsessed with class and privilege.

Chapter 4 starts off with Nick providing a list of all the guests who attended Gatsby’s parties in the summer and the irony is that none of them actually knew him. When Nick accompanies Gatsby on a trip into the city for lunch, he reveals the truth about his past. Gatsby states that he is from a wealthy family from the Midwest town of San Francisco, he graduated from Oxford, and declared himself a hero in the war. During lunch, Gatsby introduces Nick to his former business partner, Meyer Wolfsheim who apparently fixed the 1919 World Series. Based on the conversation, Nick begins to think that Gatsby is involved in an organized crime. When they leave the restaurant, they come across Tom Buchanan and as Nick introduces Gatsby to him, Gatsby becomes

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a significant example of the principle that powerful messages could not only be told, but also shown through by the setting. In the opening of chapter 4, it starts off at the bridge. Nick describes his scenery with approval. There’s a sense of beauty. It’s obvious that he’s taken in by what he sees, “in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty of the world”. It’s known from previous chapters, that when Fitzgerald mentions something beautiful, there is always a false undertone. He then mentions the funeral bringing the reader back to the idea that nothing beautiful last forever. The next scene in chapter 4 takes place at forty second street. Fitzgerald chooses the lunch between the two to

He wants closure about what happened between them. Daisy confronts Gatsby about an affair she had with Tom, and he doesn’t even care at this point because what they had was ‘real’. She claims to love them both but she decides she wants to go back with Gatsby and not her husband. On her way back, she accidently kills a woman on the side of the road speeds off with Gatsby’s car. Gatsby gets blamed for the death and the husband of the woman shoots him. No one attends Gatsby’s funeral but Nick. This goes to show Gatsby really had no body in his life, and his own true love whom he did everything for, didn’t love him equally. Throughout the whole book, Fitzgerald points out that Gatsby was living his American dream, but because his dream was Daisy, he was living his dream out of fantasy not reality.

The beginning of chapter four starts off with Nick giving a list and describing the guests that come to Gatsby’s parties. The tone of this passage seems to be casual but amused. Nick starts ranting a list of endless names, each with a description about that person, while seeming very interested in who these people are and why they are at Gatsby’s party. He says it as if he has had a lot of time to analyze and group the different kinds of people at the party. He is able to group them apart from East Egg and West Egg. He tells a lot of background information about each person,like the fact the “young Brewer, who had his nose shot off in the war” or “Edgar Beaver, whose hair turned cotton-white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all” (Fitzgerald

Main Idea: In a large part, thanks to Freud, a lot of things can be interpreted as being sexual in nature, and this is definitely true in literature. Even before Freud, sexual symbolism has run rampant in literature since its existence. For instance, in Chivalric Romance, the Knight with his Lance and the Holy Grail are all connected to the idea of sexuality. Foster explores the range of scenes that can be created to symbolize sex, without it actually being sex. In literature a lot of times, sexual acts are actually disguised as something different entirely or at least not explicitly shown.

“All the bright precious things fade so fast and they don’t come back.” Daisy Buchanan's words which can be applied to the dreams that the characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby all chased throughout the story. In The Great Gatsby, the story is told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, a veteran who dreams of making it rich on Wall Street. Everyone chases their own dreams; meanwhile surrounded by the iconic lifestyle that defined the 1920’s and the corrupt world that Fitzgerald depicts. Things take a dark turn when Tom Buchanan finds out about his wife’s affair with Gatsby. In The Great Gatsby the protagonist seeks out his dreams which are destroyed after he finally gets the chance to live them out. Fitzgerald’s use of setting, motifs, and symbolism clearly convey a theme of dream chasing particularly with the notoriously infamous Jay Gatsby.

Gatsby keeps pushing Daisy to tell Tom she never loved him and she starts to get overwhelmed and says, “You want too much. I did love him once but I loved you too.” Daisy says these things to try and make the men leave her alone. This is just a cover up or an illusion, because Daisy is starting to feel uncomfortable and at one point she was “drawing further and further into herself.” As the action dies off and Gatsby has been shot by George Wilson it comes time for Gatsby’s funeral. Nick proceeds to call Daisy to let her know that the Funeral is that day, but her and Tom and fleeing, All Nick can say about Tom is Daisy is, “They were careless people. Tom and Daisy smashed up things and creatures and they had retreated back to their money or vast carelessness.” Tom and Daisy are extremely materialistic. They didn’t care about anyone but themselves and their

The real purpose for Gatsby to do so was to attract his past lover Daisy and win back her love. Five year ago, Gatsby met and fell in love with her during his service in the army. However, Daisy was tired of waiting for Gatsby who was poor and engaged in the WWI and finally married to Tom Buchanan, who was quite wealthy and influential. But the material and physical satisfactions didn’t fulfill Daisy’s empty and hollow spirit. With the help of Nick, Gatsby and Daisy had a reunion in Nick’ house and their love seemed to revive. While soon Gatsby found that Daisy was no longer the pure and innocent girl he dreamed in the past, but a beautiful, silly, selfish and vulgar creature. Gatsby still struggled to repeat the past and hoped Daisy would change her mind and live with him forever, which led to a more pathetic tragedy to him. Afterwards the drunken Daisy, who drove in Gatsby’s car, killed Tom’s mistress Myrtle accidentally. But she made a conspiracy with Tom and cruelly through the guilty on Gatsby. Consequently, George Wilson, the husband of Myrtle rushed to Gatsby’s house abruptly and shot him to death and then committed suicide. Gatsby was eventually made the scapegoat for the cruel and selfish Daisy and her husband. Nick tried hard but few people attended Gatsby’s funeral, which was a big contrast to his luxury party with hundreds of guests. After the event, Nick decided to go back to the Midwest and keep distance from the roaring, cold and hypocrisy city

After Cody’s departure, Gatsby had received a letter from his uncle Von Hindenburg who was fighting a stalemate in Europe and feared the contingencies of an American intervention. He told him that the Kaiser asked him to spy on the Americans in exchange for the “extravagant wealth of the German Empire”. Gatsby complied, not out of fear or greed, but to satisfy the tempestuous riots of his heart.

She was stuck in a hole that would be very hard to get out of. She had been fancied by both Tom and Gatsby with their wealth and influence, and now she must choose. Yet does not know that Tom had been lying and cheating on her for several years, and that she was just another piece to his puzzle. Daisy would end up leaving town with Tom, which would signal the end Gatsby. Gatsby is shot and killed in his own pool, and only a few would come to his funeral and mourn for him. It was a tragic ending to what seemed to be a love story amongst two former admirers. I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them. "Left no address?" "No." "Say when they'd be back?" "No." "Any idea where they are? How I could reach them?" "I don't know. Can't say."

In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald does not title each of his chapters. Imagine that you could create a title for each of the nine chapters. What would you name chapter five? I decided to name chapter five “Flight of Fancy.”