"The Great Gatsby" is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The first-person narrator, Nick, uses the first chapter of the book to introduce us to himself, his cousin Daisy, her husband Tom, her friend Jordan Baker, a little bit of Gatsby himself.
Nick makes it clear in the beginning of the story that his father taught him not to judge people. He explains, however, that Daisy and her social circle disgust him, while Gatsby, on the other hand, was an impeccable gentleman.
The setting of the story includes two very different yet twin neighborhoods. As the narrator says, "I lived in the West Egg, the... well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. [...] Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water..."
The West Egg, where Nick lives, is supposed to be the poor one, even though Gatsby's mansion is located right next to Nick's bungalow. The East Egg, where Daisy and Tom live, is a collection of grand houses full of rich, vapid people. Daisy and Tom were no exception. As Nick says, "Why they came East I don't know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together." The East Egg is, to Nick's eyes, nothing more than a gathering of wealthy mansions inhabited by superficial people whose sole purpose is to feel rich and superior to the rest of the world.
The plot in the first chapter can be summarized as Nick being introduces to the East Egg lifestyle by going to dinner at Daisy's. Over dinner, he realizes Tom is not only a racist, but also an unfaithful husband to his cousin.