speculate about him even as they also tend to pigeonhole him as someone who is not really part of their class. One such character is that of Jordan Baker, who serves several purposes in the course of the story. She is the means by which Nick Carraway is brought into the group that becomes so important to him and that he as an outsider can understand better than they do themselves. Her presence illustrates the problem of honesty and its importance in human relations. Her relationship with Nick parallels the relationship of Gatsby and Daisy to a degree, and the different outcomes serve to illuminate the foolishness of Gatsby's devotion to Daisy while offering a more realistic and rational example of how human beings should relate to one another.
Nick is attracted to Jordan because of he sees a certain strength in her when he meets her: "Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me" (Piper 9). We learn in this first scene that Miss Baker is an athlete who is in training. She is also the one who introduces the name of Gatsby into the conversation, and she does so in a contemptuous manner as she says that she knows someone
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