Question What are our first impressions of Tom Buchanan? What techniques does Fitzgerald use to characterise him in Chapter One? Response The intriguing character of Tom Buchanan is introduced to us in the first chapter of The Great Gatsby. Tom is Daisy's immeasurably rich and arrogant husband, whom our narrator Nick first describes as "powerful" and tells the reader that he had reached such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterwards [savoured] of anticlimax, regarding the time Tom was a star footballer at New Haven. This is effective because it invites the reader to build the foundations of a first visual image of Tom, as being an accomplished footballer has some connotations of being a resilient and perhaps imposing man. When we are first introduced to Nick Carraway we learn quickly that he tries hard to reserve his judgements about people whom he meets. This allows the reader to think of him as trustworthy and to accept his first impressions of people. However, Nick admits that reserving judgements does have a limit, and even he is sometimes unable to suppress his early verdict of people. When Nick sees Tom again for the first time since they were at New Haven together, we immediately get the impression that Tom is very physically powerful and incredibly pompous through Nick's description of him. This is an important insight because Nick generally suppresses his judgements of people, but instead easily gathers an impression of the type of man that Tom is simply from one look. His early perception of Tom conveys that Tom's arrogant and dominant attributes must be too obvious to overlook - his early portrayal when he meets Nick is very effectively written. The immediate visual image that we receive is one of immense affluence, as Nick first sees him "in riding clothes" and in a slightly aggressive stance "with his legs apart." He is described as having a hard mouth and a brutish appearance, which also creat