58 pages • 1 hour read
Nghi VoThe Chosen and the Beautiful
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Jordan Baker and Daisy Fay, later Buchanan, have been friends since childhood. Although Daisy claims they “match,” Jordan knows this is not true, as Daisy is white and from an elite Southern family, while Jordan was “adopted from distant Tonkin” and has an appearance of ambiguous, non-white ethnicity (2).
Daisy hopes to make a match between Jordan and her cousin Nick Carraway from St. Paul, Minnesota. Jordan is attracted to Nick, and instantly identifies him as an observer-type like her. She remembers hearing a story about trouble between him and a girl, and wonders what a man who looks so innocent could have done. Jordan introduces the topic of Jay Gatsby, and Daisy reacts strongly, telling Jordan that she needs to speak to Nick alone after dinner. Meanwhile, at dinner, Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, goes on about race theory and how the white race will have to defend itself from being submerged by other races. Jordan is thinking of how to respond, when Tom is distracted by a phone call from his mistress.
After dinner, Jordan distracts Tom so that Daisy can speak to Nick alone. She reads him a story in the library from the Post. Tom praises Jordan, saying that he can see why she is holding out for a man with decent prospects, and that is why she has remained single. Jordan remembers that when Tom is not talking about race theory, he can be thoughtful.
Nick says good night. Jordan goes to bed to rest before her golf tournament, and Daisy is thinking about Gatsby.
Chapter 2 Summary
The novel harks back to Daisy and Jordan’s meeting when the former was 10 and the latter 8. Jordan, who has been newly adopted from Tonkin (the colonial name for Vietnam) by the Baker family is an object of fascination for Daisy. When Daisy asks Jordan to tell her about Tonkin, Jordan lies and says that everything is gold, much like Eliza Baker’s description of heaven. Jordan further tries to impress Daisy with a story of a dancing lion and cuts one out of her picture book. The lion gains lifelike attributes and suddenly, the book it is cut from bursts into flames. They both shriek with surprise, and the adults come and investigate the commotion. Daisy cries into her father’s arms and Mrs. Baker, the mother of Eliza, looks at Jordan angrily, before closing her in the dark and smoke-filled room.
Chapter 3 Summary
Jordan finds it difficult to connect Gatsby, the host of lavish parties, with the impoverished lieutenant that she and Daisy originally met. She considers that “the young lieutenant from Camp Taylor still had his soul, and by 1922, Jay Gatsby of West Egg had no such thing” (19).
Jordan enjoys Gatsby’s parties for the people-watching, although she always feels like an outsider because she is continually asked where she is from. She is curious about Gatsby, and stumbles into Nick, who also happens to be looking for him. They wonder how Gatsby has made his fortune. Jordan speculates that he is part of New York’s “underworld,” potentially the bootlegging scene that has sprung up since Prohibition (29). There is also a rumor that he was a spy during the war or has killed people.
Nick wants to find Gatsby on the auspices of thanking him for his invitation to the party. Jordan thinks this is odd, as Gatsby is not in the habit of sending invitations. They see him standing on the veranda, apart from the crowd and staring straight at them. Jordan contemplates Gatsby’s power, feeling that his desires are so potent that they eclipse everyone else’s.
When they talk to Gatsby, Nick does not immediately recognize him, but Gatsby says that he recognizes Nick from the war. Gatsby invites Nick out to fly his new hydroplane the next day. When, Gatsby introduces himself to Nick, who is startled and impressed, Jordan sees that Nick wants to be seen and believes the illusion that Gatsby can accomplish this.
After Gatsby goes, Nick looks intently at Jordan, as though mining her face for information, and she likes the attention, even though she knows it is Gatsby who has chiefly attracted him. She tells Nick that she does not believe all the things Gatsby says about himself, such as he went to Oxford University in England. Then, a butler announces that Gatsby wants to speak to Jordan alone, and Nick looks on jealously.
Chapter 4 Summary
When Nick calls Jordan “careless,” she senses that he is envious of her freedom and her money (40). She currently lives with the suffragette Aunt Justine who allows her whatever freedoms she pleases. For example, Aunt Justine looks upon the love bite that Nick has planted in Jordan’s neck nonchalantly.
However, despite her breezy manners, Jordan, who is both orphaned and foreign, has struggled to integrate. She recalls how as Daisy made her official debut in society in 1919 after the Armistice, her own prospects were closing due to her ethnicity. Girls who had socialized with Jordan during childhood were cutting her off, and she quickly saw that she would never be able to follow their trajectory of making socially advantageous marriages. Instead, she embarks on another type of existence, experimenting sexually and staying the night at the homes of the girls she was in love with.
Following her 1919 debut, Daisy shows up at Jordan’s house because she has fallen pregnant and needs an illegal abortion. Jordan takes her to a place that sells fried fish and does backdoor abortions, run by a woman of non-white ethnicity. She tells them to come back on Thursday and gives them a jam jar filled with herbs and a false receipt. Daisy’s pregnancy is terminated in a series of cramps, and Jordan stays the night at her house.
Chapter 5 Summary
Meanwhile, at Gatsby’s party, Jordan goes to see him in his office. He asks Jordan if she remembers the young lieutenant that he was, and she takes in his surroundings—in particular, the lavishly empty room, which reflects grandeur without history. He asks for Jordan’s help in telling Nick about who he was in the past. He even offers to bribe Jordan for her trouble, but she refuses, not wanting to be taken in by his charm.
Still, Gatsby shadows throughout the night and conveys to Jordan that she and him share the common trait of being outsiders in this elite society. Jordan does not believe this but thinks that Gatsby is sincere in his protestations.
When Gatsby takes leave of her, Jordan runs into Nick “who had been standing so close that I was surprised I hadn’t seen him” (61). Nick has been watching them intently. Jordan senses that Nick is equally possessive and curious about both her and Gatsby.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
Nghi Vo’s novel begins where F. Scott Fitzgerald’s does, with the introduction of Nick and Gatsby to the Buchanans’ Long Island social scene. However, from the outset, the most obvious alteration is that of the narrator, who is not Nick, but Daisy’s childhood friend Jordan Baker. In Vo’s novel, Jordan is no mere sidekick who exemplifies the ways of the modern flapper and provides a love interest for Nick, but an outsider with a unique perspective on the characters. In the first five chapters, Vo establishes the theme of The Other as Outsider in the following ways: Jordan is female in a patriarchal culture; she is obviously non-white in a milieu where everyone styles themselves as white; she has sexual encounters with both men and women when the norm is heterosexuality; and finally, she has magical powers that stem from her Vietnamese Eastern origins in a Western setting based in Enlightenment conceptions of rationality. These oppositions to the norm make her markedly different from Fitzgerald’s narrator Nick Carraway, whose masculinity and established middle class nature enable him to pose as an impartial observer.
Instead, Jordan has a fluid identity that switches between complete synchrony with the Buchanans and inhabiting her own perspective, where she notes markers of tension and difference. For example, her narrative begins in a sisterly way and adopts the first-person plural voice that denotes shared experience and feeling with Daisy. She describes how the two of them have come down from the magical charm they have taken thus: “[W]e came back in the tall sun porch where we had started, settling on the enormous couch at the center of the room. We tamed our ruffled hair and smoothed down our dresses just moments before Tom appeared in the doorway” (4). Here, the first-person plural voice and synchronized action of regulating one’s appearance before confronting the men, gives the impression of solidarity and shared secrets. This makes the women’s relationship more central to the narrative and paves the way for subsequent chapters when Daisy witnesses Jordan’s magic and Jordan helps Daisy when she is in sticky situations, such as needing an illegal abortion.
However, while Daisy’s cooing words profess the deepest affection for Jordan, Jordan is conscious from the outset that the relationship is an unequal one, owing to their racial difference in a racist society. For example, Daisy can label Jordan “the heathen” and receive comfort in the arms of her father when the magic of a book bursting into flames becomes too much for her, whereas Jordan is left alone, to sit in shame amongst the ashes (13). Then, in later life, Daisy can summon Jordan at will whenever she is in a difficult situation that she is ashamed of, thereby associating her non-white friend with an underworld of shady characters. This occurs in 1919 when Daisy needs an abortion in an era where the social morals disapproved of premarital sex and abortion. Daisy automatically assumes that Jordan will know of a venue. Removed from the refined milieu of her upbringing, Jordan’s racial difference becomes more apparent when the abortion provider at Fulbright’s, who is non-white herself, mistakes her for one of the Toy sisters, the other Asian girls in town. Jordan wonders “if I should have claimed one of them,” which indicates her confusion about where she stands in society, as she is uncertain of the benefits of passing as either white or Asian (49). This question of passing becomes an issue again at Gatsby’s parties, where white people are continually enchanted by her exoticism and ask her where she is from. While Jordan, with the trademark wit that she has used for protection, levels the question back at them, she is ultimately not sufficiently empowered in a racist society when the ideas of white supremacy that will lead to the Manchester Act are gaining ground. Here, Vo sets up a scenario where Jordan will have to decisively position herself in relation to these issues, rather than simply trying to pass amongst white people.
Sexual Fluidity is also introduced in these first five chapters, both in the closet-centered narratives of Jordan’s sexual awakening, and the explicit bisexual attraction Nick embodies in his attraction to both her and Gatsby. Jordan can see that the feminine sway of her hips attracts Nick’s attention; however, Gatsby is who truly mesmerizes him, as Nick always keeps an eye on him. Vo not only draws out the erotic strain in Fitzgerald’s original depiction of the dynamic between Nick and Gatsby but also shows how Gatsby is keen to put himself at the center of all relationships, including the one between Jordan and Nick, and thereby gain control over them. Vo introduces a more sinister side to Gatsby’s personality than is evident in Fitzgerald’s original.
