Describe Tom Buchanan and events that take place concerning him in chapter 4 of The Great Gatsby.

In this chapter, we see Tom once in person, and then through Jordan Baker's recollections of him early in his marriage to Daisy.

First, Nick goes to lunch with Gatsby in the city, where they eat with Mr. Wolfsheim and run into Tom Buchanan. Nick sees Tom from across the room and takes Gatsby over to meet him. Tom is glad to see Nick: he "jumped up, and took half a dozen steps in our...

In this chapter, we see Tom once in person, and then through Jordan Baker's recollections of him early in his marriage to Daisy.

First, Nick goes to lunch with Gatsby in the city, where they eat with Mr. Wolfsheim and run into Tom Buchanan. Nick sees Tom from across the room and takes Gatsby over to meet him. Tom is glad to see Nick: he "jumped up, and took half a dozen steps in our direction," Nick says. Tom asks Nick where he's been lately. Nick introduces Gatsby to him, but Gatsby doesn't register on Tom at all, and when Nick turns around, Gatsby has disappeared.

In the second encounter with Tom, Jordan, who was a bridesmaid in Daisy's 1917 wedding, tells the story of Daisy getting drunk the day before the wedding and wanting to call it off, but marrying Tom after all the next day. Some time afterwards, a scandal makes it into the newspaper when Tom gets into a car accident with a hotel chambermaid he has been having an affair with. We learn that Tom and Daisy move to Chicago and join "a fast crowd, all of them young and rich and wild."

These two encounters include irony: Tom has no idea how big a role Gatsby will briefly play in this life, and foreshadowing: Tom's accident with the chambermaid in the car foreshadows events at the end of the novel.