In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turningover in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one，” hetold me， “just remember that all the people in thisworld haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more but we’ve always beenunusually communicative in a reserved way， and understood that he meant a great deal more thanthat. In consequence I’m inclined to reserve alljudgments， a habit that has opened up many curiousnatures to me and also made me the victim of nota few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quickto detect and attach itself to this quality when appears in a normal person， and so it came aboutthat in college I was unjustly accused of being politician， because I was privy to the secret griefsof wild， unknown men. Most of the confidenceswere unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep，preoccupation， or a hostile levity when I realized bysome unmistakable sign that an intimate revelationwas quivering on the horizon—for the intimaterevelations of young men or at least the terms inwhich they express them are usually plagiaristicand marred by obvious suppressions. Reservingjudgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still little afraid of missing something if I forget that， asmy father snobbishly suggested， and I snobbishlyrepeat a sense of the fundamental decencies isparcelled out unequally at birth.
And， after boasting this way of my tolerance， Icome to the admission that it has a limit. Conductmay be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don’t care whatit’s founded on. When I came back from the Eastlast autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be inuniform and at a sort of moral attention forever； Iwanted no more riotous excursions with privilegedglimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby， the manwho gives his name to this book， was exempt frommy reaction—Gatsby who represented everythingfor which I have an unaffected scorn. If personalityis an unbroken series of successful gestures， thenthere was something gorgeous about him， some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life， as ifhe were related to one of those intricate machinesthat register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.
This responsiveness had nothing to do with thatflabby impressionability which is dignified underthe name of the “creative temperament” —it was anextraordinary gift for hope， a romantic readiness suchas I have never found in any other person and which itis not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turnedout all right at the end； it is what preyed on Gatsby，what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams thattemporarily closed out my interest in the abortivesorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent， well-to-do peoplein this middle-western city for three generations.
The Carraways are something of a clan and we havea tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes ofBuccleuch， but the actual founder of my line wasmy grandfather’s brother who came here in fiftyone，sent a substitute to the Civil War and startedthe wholesale hardware business that my fathercarries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle but I’m supposed tolook like him—with special reference to the ratherhard-boiled painting that hangs in Father’s office. graduated from New Haven in 1915， just a quarterof a century after my father， and a little later participated in that delayed Teutonic migrationknown as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raidso thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead ofbeing the warm center of the world the middle-westnow seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go east and learn the bond business.
Everybody I knew was in the bond business so supposed it could support one more single man.
All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if theywere choosing a prep-school for me and finallysaid， “Why—ye-es” with very grave， hesitant faces.
Father agreed to finance me for a year and aftervarious delays I came east， permanently， I thought，in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm season and I had just left country of wide lawns and friendly trees， so whena young man at the office suggested that we take house together in a commuting town it sounded likea great idea. He found the house， a weather beatencardboard bungalow at eighty a month， but at thelast minute the firm ordered him to Washingtonand I went out to the country alone. I had a dog，at least I had him for a few days until he ran away，and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who mademy bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnishwisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morningsome man， more recently arrived than I， stoppedme on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village？” he askedhelplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely nolonger. I was a guide， a pathfinder， an original settler.
He had casually conferred on me the freedom of theneighborhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts ofleaves growing on the trees—just as things grow infast movies—I had that familiar conviction that lifewas beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of theyoung breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumeson banking and credit and investment securitiesand they stood on my shelf in red and gold likenew money from the mint， promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morganand Maecenas knew. And I had the high intentionof reading many other books besides. I was ratherliterary in college—one year I wrote a series of verysolemn and obvious editorials for the “Yale News”—and now I was going to bring back all such thingsinto my life and become again that most limited ofall specialists， the “well-rounded man.” This isn’tjust an epigram—life is much more successfullylooked at from a single window， after all.
