Trying to gain our trust in his judgment, he starts off with a reflection on his own upbringing, quoting his father's words about how he has "advantages", which most likely are his spiritual and/or moral advantages. It seems as if Nick wants to show that his upbringing gives him the moral fiber with which to withstand and pass judgment on the amoral world of the wealthy, such as the people and society he had observed the in summer in New York. He says, that as a consequence of such an upbringing, he is "inclined to reserve all judgments" about other people, but then goes on to say that such "tolerance . . . has a limit".
From this we first learn to trust Nick to give us an even-handed insight to the story, and its characters. But, he neither reserves all judgments nor does his tolerance reach its limit. He does say that "I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known"(Chapter 3), however we see him lie on several occasions. Yet he still has proven himself as a principled and upright person. Nick is very partial in his way of telling the story about several characters.
Not only does Nick gain the trust of us the readers, he also