评析《了不起的盖茨比》中的男性形象--毕业论文
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【标题】评析《了不起的盖茨比》中的男性形象【作者】【关键词】【指导老师】【专业】英语【正文】Ⅰ. IntroductionFitzgerald’s works contain many literary values. Especially his masterpiece The Great Gatsby, people often pay more attention to it. Some articles about The Great Gatsby have been published, such as American Dream and Character Symbolization in the Novel The Great Gatsby1, On Nick Carraway’s Dual Roles in The Great Gatsby2, Gatsby: Another Fitzgerald3, etc. These articles have studied the work and the characters in The Great Gats by, they can help people to read and understand Fitzgerald’s work clearly, but they mainly focus on one aspect of the book, not integrated. So, the aim of this article is to introduce the two major male characters (Gatsby and Nick) of the book. And as we know, only having enough comprehension of the author, his life and the surroundings he lives, the article can be understood clearly.Though Mark Twain and William Dean Howells think that America will become the hope of the world, F. Scott Fitzgerald gradually finds that this new world is all disaster. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lives in the midst of the “roaring twenties” and is one part of it all--driving fast cars, drinking hard whisky, and taking a great delight in it, is perceptive enough to understand that America is “a moon that never roses.” And as much as he enjoys the “roaring” of the post--war boom years, he foresees its doom and failure.Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul. Firstly he studied in a private school in New Jersey, then Princeton University. In his junior year he was forced out of Princeton midway by academic difficulties; he returned the following autumn but left college permanently in 1917 and then join the army, at that time World War I had already neared its end. While stationed in Montgomery, Alabama, he met and fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beautiful girl named Zelda Sayre. Zelda lived in a rich family and she led a very luxury life. So when Fitzgerald proposed to her, she refused to marry him unless he became an extremely wealthy man. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became a famous man, earning enough money and fame to make Zelda believe he had the ability to let her lead a rich and happy life, and finally Zelda agreed to marry him. After their marriage, they led a luxury life, he seemed to get into the upper class society, and they often took part inthe luxurious party held by the rich. Once a time they had happy times indeed. In 1925 Fitzgerald managed to complete his masterpiece: The Great Gatsby. And it brought him a great success. But his next novel, Tender Is the Night which published in 1934 was received coldly mainly because of the Great Depression in America and people had no time to care one book about the immigrants in France. And his wife suffered a nervous breakdown. Battered by the failure of the book and Zelda’s mental disease, he drank too much alcohol and his body was completely destroyed. In 1940, he died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four.Fitzgerald is a famous writer in 1920’s American society and iscalled “spokesman in the Jazz Age”. And his greatness lies in the fact that “he found intuitively in his personal experience the embodiment of the nation and created a myth ou t of American life”4. The story of The Great Gatsby is a good illustration. T. S. Eliot read The Great Gatsby three times and concluded that it was “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James.”5Ⅱ. The Analysis of Major Male Character sThe Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s masterpiece and is one of the greatest novels in Modern American literature. It illustrates the society in the 1920s and the beliefs, values and dreams of the American people at that time. These beliefs, values and dreams can be summed up be what is termedthe “American Dream”: a dream of money, wealth, prosperity and the happiness that come with the booming economy and get-rich-quick plans that form the most important part of the ugly American upper-class society. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates the American Dream and the “foul dust” or the carelessness of the society that floats along with this dream. For example, Gatsby wants to get into the upper class, and finally when he uses illegal means, such as bootlegging, to gain enormous wealth, it seems to be that he has reached it, but according to his tragically destiny it is testified that he is failure. And his dream is totally broken. According to the characters’ respective expectation, it can be seen that the American Dream is not limited to one social class or type of person, but to the whole nation, to everyone. The Great Gatsby is also considered as an autobiographical novel. Fitzgerald combines his experience with the male characters’, such as Gatsby, and Nick, showing his own experience, life and dream.A. The Tragic Hero -Jay GatsbyThe tragic hero Gatsby is a poor youth from the Midwest and at seventeen when he states in Louisville he falls in love with Daisy, a local wealthy and beautiful girl. When they dating, he tells lie to Daisy and makes her thinking that he has a very rich family and can take care of her. But actually Gatsby is too poor to marry her, there is no rich family standing behind him; he even has no money to buy some clothes so he is just only to wear his uniform. So this is a hopeless love. But Gatsby believes money can balance them. From that time on, he regards Daisy as a dream which he canpursuit all his life. And then he is sent to fight in Europe during the First World War. Five years later when he comes back from the war Daisy has married to a rich and strong man who is called Tom. But Gatsby continues his dream, he believes that Daisy still love him.So he does everything for his dream-getting Daisy’s love back; even his dream is unworthy of him. He thinks that wealth can solve all his problems: time, Daisy, and love. “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!…I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly.“She’ll see.” 6 A fter he has gained enormous wealth by bootlegging and gambling, he buys a big luxury house at West Egg and holds a very luxury party every weekend, for nothing, but the only purpose is to draw Daisy’s attention; he wants to use the most lavish party to impress Daisy and then goes back to his arm. And the green light, situated at the end of East Egg dock, represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy:“If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,” s aid Gatsby. “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.”Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.7 In fact, the green light stands for the success achieved by Gatsby to some extent. It leads Gatsby to go after the future, the false belief in his ideal world, not only the love for Daisy.However, Gatsby’s dream is bound to fail. On the one hand, he uses luxury party to make Daisy go to his house and when she sees Gatsby’s wealth she crying, Gatsby finds that she is also beautiful like five years ago, but there are something wrong on her, and he thinks her voice is full of money. He realizes it, but he still believes that Daisy love him and will go back to him. And at last when she is forced to make a choice between her husband and Gatsby, she does not know who would give her a wealthier, more comfortable life. As Tom tells h er Gatsby’s enormous wealth come from illegal means, for example, bootlegging. “He and this Wolfshiem go and sold grain alcohol over the counter.”8 When Daisy hears this, she knows what kind of future would be like if she chose Gatsby, so she leaves Gatsby and stands by her husband’s side naturally. On the other hand, he holds an unrealistic view of life and how he can recreate the past. His dream has distorted in reality, and then he realizes that the image of life and of Daisy does not coincide with the real life. But he continues to his dream. Gatsby’s life is full of pity, when he is rich and has a fair social positionmany famous and rich people come to the weekend party, even Daisy is attracted by it under Nick’s help, and his party are full of flowers, fruits, music, champagne, etc. But when Gatsby is shot dead, the whole large luxury house like a dead place, except Nick and Gatsby’s father, no one comes, no one cares about him, and no one would like to take part in his funeral. And his death is also unworthy, he is just for protecting his lover, and hides away the yellow car which knocked down Myrtle. Till then he believes Daisy love him and he waits Daisy’s call in his big luxury house, but till to his death there is no calling from Daisy, even on his funeral, Daisy does not appear. To some extent his tragic destiny is caused by Daisy.The tragic end of his dream is the finish of The Great Gatsby. Just as Fitzgerald sees the American dream breaking down in the 1920s, American powerful optimism, vitality, and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth.B. The Novel’s Narrator-NickNick Carraway is a pragmatic man, who comes from the Middle West. He has distinctive nature and value standard. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me,“just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” 9 He is also a serious and intellect young man and makes the objective judgment to the major characters. His final choice to go back to the Middle West reflects the author’s moral direction.In The Great Gatsby, like Gatsby, the novel’s narrator-Nick has the same thoughts, he also wants to get into the upper class, and he also comes to the East. But he does not sink into the American dream. He is just still working hard for something, and he wants to be himself, as a tolerant, objective and reliable man. The money of the upper class is just a tiny bit of his dream together with his admiration for the rich East Eggers. Mainly, his dream consists of spiritual values, of a pursuit of honesty. He gives a highly praise of himself: “I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.” 10That’s my Middle West…the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark…I see now that this has a story of t he West, after all —Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly inadaptable to Eastern life.11The above sentences show that Nick realizes for the first time that though his story is set on the East Coast, the western character of his understandings (“some deficiency in common”) is the source of the story’s tensions and attitudes. He considers each character’s behavior and value choices as a reaction to the wealth-obsessed culture of New York. This point leads Nick decide to leave the East Coast and return to Middle West in search of a less morally ambiguous environment. So he gives up theopportunity to become rich, he completely follows his moral standard. Because when he travels to New York to learn the bond business, he lives in the West Egg district of Long Island, next door to Gatsby. He is also Daisy’s cousin, which makes him have the chance to know the love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. As a result of his special relationship to these two people, Nick is also the perfect choice to narrate the novel.Ⅲ. The Relationship between the Major Characters and DaisyDaisy Buchanan is a round (In fact, according to the novel’s introduction, Zelda, the Fitzgerald’s wife,is the model of Daisy.) and dynamic character with many different sides in her personality. Early in the book, she is described as a sweet and innocent young woman. She grows up as “the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville.”12 But, as the sto ry develops, Daisy becomes shallow, bored, and sardonic. She just loves money, ease, and material luxury. So, when a wealthy, powerful young man named Tom asks her to marry him, Daisy decides not to wait for Gatsby. At the same time, the hearty love is far away from her. She is somewhat cynical and behaves superficially to mask her pain at her husband’s constant infidelity and does not take care of her daughter. And the social standard of American femininity in the 1920s that she follows makes her avoid such tension-filled issues as her undying love for Gatsby.A. Gatsby and Daisy’s Sweetheart RelationshipIn Gatsby’s eyes, Daisy is his American Dream. Gatsby has made Daisy a symbol of everything he values. In order to get back Daisy’s love, he holds the la vish weekly party to draw Daisy’s attention and gets help from Nick. Chapter five is the turning-point chapter of The Great Gatsby, as Gatsby’s reunion with Daisy is the link which the novel goes on. Gatsby’s character after his meeting with Daisy is the most revealing, so is Daisy: Daisy’s face was smeared with tears… But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room…“I’m glad, Jay.” Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told only of her unexpected joy.13Gatsby’s love to Daisy is loyal; however, Daisy’s love to Gatsby is doubtful. Gatsby blinds himself to realizing that Daisy would never give up her own class background to go with him. In Chapter seven, Gatsby wants to Daisy to tell her husband that she has never loved him. He needs to know that she has always loved him, that she has always been emotionally loyal to him. But he is wrong, Daisy finally chooses Tom .And his dream has been totally broken.Sympathetically, Gatsby decides to revenge Daisy in order to demonstrate the deep love. But, as Nick writes, Gatsby must have already realized that “what a grotesque thing a rose is.” 14Though the rose has been a conventional symbol of beauty throughout centuries of poetry, Nick suggests that roses aren’t inherently beautiful, and that people only view them that。
