The Great Gatsby I Summary, Context, Reception, & Analysis

Life in West Egg and East Egg

In the spring of 1922, Nick takes a house in the fictional village of West Egg on Long Island, where he finds himself living among the colossal mansions of the newly rich. Across the water in the more refined village of East Egg live his cousin Daisy and her brutish, absurdly wealthy husband Tom Buchanan. Early in the summer Nick goes over to their house for dinner, where he also meets Jordan Baker, a friend of Daisy’s and a well-known golf champion, who tells him that Tom has a mistress in New York City. In a private conversation, Daisy confesses to Nick that she has been unhappy. Returning to his house in West Egg, he catches sight of his neighbor Jay Gatsby standing alone in the dark and stretching his arms out to a green light burning across the bay at the end of Tom and Daisy’s dock.

Early in July Tom introduces Nick to his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who lives with her spiritless husband George Wilson in what Nick calls “a valley of ashes”: an industrial wasteland presided over by the bespectacled eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, which stare down from an advertising billboard. Meeting her at the garage where George works as a repairman, the three of them go to Tom and Myrtle’s apartment in Manhattan. They are joined by Myrtle’s sister and some other friends who live nearby, and the evening ends in heavy drunkenness and Tom punching Myrtle in the nose when she brings up Daisy. Nick wakes up in a train station the morning afterward.

As the summer progresses, Nick grows accustomed to the noises and lights of dazzling parties held at his neighbor’s house, where the famous and newly rich turn up on Saturday nights to enjoy Gatsby’s well-stocked bar and full jazz orchestra. Nick attends one of these parties when personally invited by Gatsby and runs into Jordan, with whom he spends most of the evening. He is struck by the apparent absence of the host and the impression that all of his guests seem to have dark theories about Gatsby’s past. However, Nick meets him at last in a rather quiet encounter later in the evening when the man sitting beside him identifies himself as Gatsby. Gatsby disappears and later asks to speak to Jordan privately. Jordan returns amazed by what he has told her, but she is unable to tell Nick what it is.