Chapter 1: The Narrator's Arrival
Nick Carraway, a young man from the Midwest, moved to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn the bond business. He rented a small house in West Egg, a fashionable area on Long Island, across the bay from East Egg where old money families lived.
His neighbor, Jay Gatsby, lived in a magnificent mansion that hosted extravagant parties every weekend. Nick noticed Gatsby standing alone on his lawn, reaching out toward a green light at the end of a dock across the bay, which seemed to hold some mysterious significance.
Nick visited his cousin Daisy Buchanan in East Egg, where he met her wealthy husband Tom and learned about their troubled marriage. Tom's arrogant nature and his involvement with another woman, Myrtle Wilson, hinted at the moral corruption beneath the glamorous surface of their lives.