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I . My Neighbour’s House When I was younger and softer , my father gave me some advice that I have been turning over in my mind ever since . “ Whenever you feel like criticising anyone , ” he told me , “ just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the chances that you’ve had . ” He said no more , but I understood that he meant a great deal more than that . Because of his words , I have always tried not to judge people too quickly . This habit has made many strange people open their hearts to me , and it has also made me listen to a lot of very boring ones . But my patience has a limit . When I came back from the East last autumn , I wanted the whole world to stand still and behave well for ever . I wanted no more wild trips into other people’s hearts . Only Gatsby , the man who gives his name to this book , was free from my anger . Gatsby stood for all the things that I hate , and yet there was something wonderful about him . He had a gift for hope , a romantic readiness that I have never found in any other person . No , Gatsby turned out all right at the end . It was what fed on Gatsby , the dirty dust that floated behind his dreams , that closed my heart for a time . My family have been well known and rich for three generations in a city in the Middle West . I went to college at Yale , in New Haven , and finished in 1915 . After the Great War , which I had fought in France , I came back restless . The Middle West no longer felt like the warm centre of the world , so I decided to go East and learn the bond business . Every man I knew was selling bonds , so I supposed there was room for one more . My father agreed to pay my way for a year , and in the spring of 1922 I came East , for good , as I thought . I rented a small , weather - beaten house for eighty dollars a month on Long Island , to the east of New York , and a Finnish woman came to cook for me . About twenty miles from the city , two pieces of land push out into the water of Long Island Sound . They have almost the same shape , like a pair of huge eggs , and a small bay lies between them . People call them West Egg and East Egg . I lived at West Egg , which was the less fashionable of the two . My house was only fifty yards from the water , squeezed between two huge places . The one on my right looked like a town hall in France , with a tower on one side , a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden . It was Gatsby’s mansion . My own house was small and ugly , but I had a view of the water and the company of millionaires , all for eighty dollars a month .
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