The story’s first adventure, and the one that comprises a large portion of Chapter 1, is Nick’s visit with his cousin, Daisy Buchannan, and her husband, Tom, at their mansion in East Egg. The visit not only introduces the other characters crucial to the story, but it also presents a number of themes that will be developed in various ways throughout the novel. Daisy and Tom appear in stark contrast to the image of Nick: Whereas he is relatively industrious (after all, he came East by himself to make his fortune rather than staying home and doing what is expected of him), the Buchannans live in the lap of luxury. Arriving at the mansion, Nick is greeted by Tom, dressed in riding clothes. Tom is an impressive figure, dressed for a sport linked closely with people of wealth and means (“effeminate swank” as Nick calls it). He stands boldly, with “a rather hard mouth,” “a supercilious manner,” “two shining arrogant eyes,” and speaks with “a touch of paternal contempt.” Clearly, Tom is not a gentle and sensitive man. Rather, he is harsh and powerful, caring little for social equality and protocol. He has rank and privilege and that’s the way he wants to keep it. The first words out of his mouth — “I’ve got a nice place here” — bring home his inbred superiority as well. As the story unfolds, Tom serves as a foil to Gatsby, marking a striking contrast from Gatsby’s newly found wealth and dreamy nature.
Fitzgerald sets the women, Daisy and her friend Jordan Baker, in a dreamlike setting, emphasizing their inability to deal with reality. Both young women, dressed entirely in white (suggesting purity or, in contrast, a void of something such as intellectualism), are engulfed by the expansiveness of the room in which they are sitting. In one of Fitzgerald’s many evocative and imagistic passages, he notes how both women’s dresses are “rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house.” As Tom shuts the windows and the breeze dissipates, “the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.” Hardly could a more languid image be created. These are not people who concern themselves with eking out a living.
