the great gatsby(文学鉴赏论文)

The Great GatsbyAbstract: The passage is mainly talking about the background and the author of the Great Gatsby. And then I am going to talk about Daisy who is the girl who Catsby love and what I think about her.Key Words: backgroud Daisy CatsbyF.Scott Fitzgerald was the author of The Great Gatsby who was considered as one of the most outstanding writers in the USA in the 20th century. His family was socially prominent an genteelly poor. He married with his wife after struggle for furtune. In this book, the protagonist Daisy was the epitome of his wife while Gatsby was miniature of the author. He write so many work such as This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Damned, Tender is the Night, The last Tycoon. But I think The Catsby is the most wonderful one. T.S.Elliot had ever said that the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James, beacause Fitzgerald depicted the extolled grandest and most boisterous, reckless and merry-making scene.Writen in 1920s, the novel show the picture following the First World War. American society enjoyed prosperity during the ‘roaring’ 1920s as the economy soars. They put aside traditional morals and values, but lead a voluptuous life. Gatsby is a poor youth from the Midwest who falls in love with a girl named Daisy from a wealthy family. Gatsby is too poor to marry her, so he left and asked her waiting for him. Daisy is married to a rich young man named Tom Buchanan. In order to win her back, Catsby entertained lavishly to catch the attention of Daisy. By accident, Nick Carraway, a relative of Daisy helps Catsby ti make an appointment with Daisy. But he finds Daisy is no longer the ideal love of his dream. Daisy and Tom do not love each other. Tom has mistress named Myrtle Wilson who is a wife of a owner of garage. One day, Daisy has a quarrel with Tom. She rushes out and drives Catsby’s car out. As a result, she kills Myrtle Wilson by accident. In order to protect themselves, Daisy and Tom lie to Myrtle’s husband and say that it is Catsby kills her eventually. Myrtle’shusband goes to Catsby’s house and shoots him down.I am not going to talk the great Catsby. Who I am going to talk about is Daisy who is a girl from wealth family. There is not doubt that the innocent love between Daisy and Catsby exists at first. She chooses to married to Tom who is very rich. In fact she worships material so I am not surprise at the death of Catsby. She is a selfish. What she really concerns is herself not the feeling of others, When she met Catsby again, she is not excited about finding the lover but thinks that she can get rid of the aweful life. She looks forward to the life of upper class. At the end, what she chooses is still her husband who can give her good condition and protect her. “The beautiful fool girl” is what she calls her daughter. I think she will be another ‘Daisy’ one day. It is irony that Daisy kills Myrtle but Catsby dies replacing her.The Great Gatsby is a good book. The Oxford Companion said that his finest novel, sensitive and symbolice treatment of themes of contemporary life related with irony and pathos to the legendry of the American dream.。

The Great Gatsby F.Scott.FitzgeraldContextFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor Francis Scott Key, the author of The Star-Spangled Banner. Fitzgerald was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Though an intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Despite being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end.Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama. There he met and fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre. Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth, fun, and leisure led her to delay their wedding until he could prove a success. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him.Many of these events from Fitzgerald’s early life appear in his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Like Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is a thoughtful young man from Minnesota, educated at an Ivy League school (in Nick’s case, Yale), who moves to New York after the war. Also similar to Fitzgerald is Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes wealth and luxury and who falls in love with a beautiful young woman while stationed at a military camp in the South.Having become a celebrity, Fitzgerald fell into a wild, reckless life-style of parties and decadence, while desperately trying to please Zelda by writing to earn money. Similarly, Gatsby amasses a great deal of wealth at a relatively young age, and devotes himself to acquiring possessions and throwing parties that he believes will enable him to win Daisy’s love. As the giddiness of the Roaring Twenties dissolved into the bleakness of the Great Depression, however, Zelda suffered a nervous breakdown and Fitzgerald battled alcoholism, which hampered his writing. He published Tender Is the Night in 1934, and sold short stories to The Saturday Evening Post to support his lavish lifestyle. In 1937, he left for Hollywood to write screenplays, and in 1940, while working on his novel The Love of the Last Tycoon, died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four.Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed “the Jazz Age.” Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1919), made millionaires out of bootleggers, and an underground culture of revelry sprang up. Sprawling private parties managed to elude police notice, and “speakeasies”—secret clubs that sold liquor—thrived. The chaos and violence of World War I left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the war turned to wildand extravagant living to compensate. The staid conservatism and timeworn values of the previous decade were turned on their ear, as money, opulence, and exuberance became the order of the day.Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which unrestrained materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In many way s, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised.Plot OverviewNick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to have established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth. Nick’s next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night.Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at Yale and has social connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, an erstwhile classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also l earns a bit about Daisy and Tom’s marriage: Jordan tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose.As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Ga tsby’s legendary parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone “old sport.” Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsby’s extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he isafraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.After a short time, Tom grows in creasingly suspicious of his wife’s relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans’ house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to drive into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand, and he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal—his fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him.When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that Gatsby’s car has struck and killed Myrtle, Tom’s lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle, but that Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtle’s husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George, who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots himself.Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust h e feels for the people surrounding Gatsby’s life and for the emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects that just as Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsby’s power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him “great,” Nick reflects that the era of dreaming—both Gatsby’s dream and the American dream—is over.Character ListNick Carraway - The novel’s narrator, Nick is a young man from Minnesota who, after being educated at Yale and fighting in World War I, goes to New York City to learn the bond business. Honest, tolerant, and inclined to reserve judgment, Nick often serves as a confidant for those with troubling secrets. After moving to West Egg, a fictional area of Long Island that is home to the newly rich, Nick quickly befriends his next-door neighbor, the mysterious Jay Gatsby. As Daisy Buchanan’s cousin, he facil itates the rekindling of the romance between her and Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is told entirely through Nick’s eyes; his thoughts and perceptions shape and color the story.Nick Carraway (In-Depth Analysis)Jay Gatsby - The title character and protagonist of the novel, Gatsby is a fabulously wealthy young man living in a Gothic mansion in West Egg. He is famous for the lavish parties he throws every Saturday night, but no one knows where he comes from, what he does, or how he made his fortune. As the novel progresses, Nick learns that Gatsby was born James Gatz on a farm in North Dakota; working for a millionaire made him dedicate his life to the achievement of wealth. When he met Daisy while training to be an officer in Louisville, he fell in love with her. Nick also learns that Gatsby made his fortune through criminal activity, as he was willing to do anything to gain the social position he thought necessary to win Daisy. Nick views Gatsby as a deeply flawed man, dishonest and vulgar, whose extraordinary optimism and power to transform his dreams into reality make him “great” nonetheless.Jay Gatsby (In-Depth Analysis)Daisy Buchanan - Nick’s cousin, and the woman Gatsby loves. As a young woman in Louisville before the war, Daisy was courted by a number of officers, including Gatsby. She fell in love with Gatsby and promised to wait for him. However, Daisy harbors a deep need to be loved, and when a wealthy, powerful young man named Tom Buchanan asked her to marry him, Daisy decided not to wait for Gatsby after all. Now a beautiful socialite, Daisy lives with Tom across from Gatsby in the fashionable East Egg district of Long Island. She is sardonic and somewhat cynical, and behaves superficially to mask her pain at her husband’s constant infidelity.Daisy Buchanan (In-Depth Analysis)Tom Buchanan - Daisy’s immensely wealthy husband, once a member of Nick’s social club at Yale. Powerfully built and hailing from a socially solid old family, Tom is an arrogant, hypocritical bully. His social attitudes are laced with racism and sexism, and he never even considers trying to live up to the moral standard he demands from those around him. He has no moral qualms about his own extramarital affair with Myrtle, but when he begins to suspect Daisy and Gatsby of having an affair, he becomes outraged and forces a confrontation.Jordan Baker - Daisy’s friend, a woman with whom Nick becomes romantically involved during the course of the novel. A competitive golfer, Jordan represents one of the “new women” of the 1920s—cynical, boyish, and self-centered. Jordan is beautiful, but also dishonest: she cheated in order to win her first golf tournament and continually bends the truth.Myrtle Wilson - Tom’s lover, whose lifeless husband George owns a run-down garage in the valley of ashes. Myrtle herself possesses a fierce vitality and desperately looks for a way to improve her situation. Unfortunately for her, she chooses Tom, who treats her as a mere object of his desire.George Wilson - Myrtle’s husband, the lifeless, exhausted owner of a run-down auto shop at the edge of the valley of ashes. George loves and idealizes Myrtle, and is devastated by her affair with Tom. George is consumed with grief when Myrtle is killed. George is comparable to Gatsby in that both are dreamers and both are ruined by their unrequited love for women who love Tom.Owl Eyes - The eccentric, bespectacled drunk whom Nick meets at the first party he attends at Gatsby’s mansion. Nick finds Owl Eyes looking through Gatsby’s library, astonished that the boo ks are real.Klipspringer - The shallow freeloader who seems almost to live at Gatsby’s mansion, taking advantage of his host’s money. As soon as Gatsby dies, Klipspringer disappears—he does not attend the funeral, but he does call Nick about a pair of te nnis shoes that he left at Gatsby’s mansion.Analysis of Major CharactersJay GatsbyThe title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved this lofty goal by participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities. From his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty and longed for wealth and sophistication—he dropped out of St. Olaf’s College after only two weeks because he could not bear the janitorial job with which he was paying his tuition. Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in World War I in 1917. Gatsby immediately fell in love with Daisy’s aura of luxury, grace, and charm, and lied to her about his own background in order to convince her that he was good enough for her. Daisy promised to wait for him when he left for the war, but married Tom Buchanan in 1919, while Gatsby was studying at Oxford after the war in an attempt to gain an education. From that moment on, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, and his acquisition of millions of dollars, his purchase of a gaudy mansion on West Egg, and his lavish weekly parties are all merely means to that end.Fitzgerald delays the introduction of most of this information until fairly late in the novel. Gats by’s reputation precedes him—Gatsby himself does not appear in a speaking role until Chapter III. Fitzgerald initially presents Gatsby as the aloof, enigmatic host of the unbelievably opulent parties thrown every week at his mansion. He appears surrounded by spectacular luxury, courted by powerful men and beautiful women. He is the subject of a whirlwind of gossip throughout New York and is already a kind of legendary celebrity beforehe is ever introduced to the reader. Fitzgerald propels the novel forward through the early chapters by shrouding Gatsby’s background and the source of his wealth in mystery (the reader learns about Gatsby’s childhood in Chapter VI and receives definitive proof of his criminal dealings in Chapter VII). As a result, the reader’s first, distant impressions of Gatsby strike quite a different note from that of the lovesick, naive young man who emerges during the later part of the novel.Fitzgerald uses this technique of delayed character revelation to emphasize the theatrical quality of Gatsby’s approach to life, which is an important part of his personality. Gatsby has literally created his own character, even changing his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby to represent his reinvention of himself. As his relentless quest for Daisy demonstrates, Gatsby has an extraordinary ability to transform his hopes and dreams into reality; at the beginning of the novel, he appears to the reader just as he desires to appear to the world. This talent for self-invention is what gives Gatsby his qual ity of “greatness”: indeed, the title “The Great Gatsby” is reminiscent of billings for such vaudeville magicians as “The Great Houdini” and “The Great Blackstone,” suggesting that the persona of Jay Gatsby is a masterful illusion.Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.(See Important Quotations Explained)As the novel progresses and Fitzgerald deconstructs Gatsby’s self-presentation, Gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything on his dreams, not realizing that his dreams are unworthy of him. Gatsby invests Daisy with an idealistic perfection that she cannot possibly attain in reality and pursues her with a passionate zeal that blinds him to her limitations. His dream of her disintegrates, revealing the corruption that wealth causes and the unworthiness of the goal, much in the way Fitzgerald sees the American dream crumbling in the 1920s, as America’s powerful optimism, vitality, and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth.Gatsby is contrasted most consistently with Nick. Critics point out that the former, passionate and active, and the latter, sober and reflective, seem to represent two sides of Fitzgerald’s personality. Additionally, whereas Tom is a cold-hearted, aristocratic bully, Gatsby is a loyal and good-hearted man. Though his lifestyle and attitude differ greatly from those of George Wilson, Gatsby and Wilson share the fact that they both lose their love interest to Tom.Nick CarrawayIf Gatsby represents one part of Fitzgerald’s personality, the flashy celebrity who pursued and glorified wealth in order to impress the woman he loved, then Nick represents another part: the quiet, reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East. A young man (he turns thirty during the course of the novel) from Minnesota, Nick travels to New York in 1922 to learn the bond business. He lives in the West Egg district ofLong Island, next door to Gatsby. Nick is also Daisy’s cousin, which enables him to o bserve and assist the resurgent love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. As a result of his relationship to these two characters, Nick is the perfect choice to narrate the novel, which functions as a personal memoir of his experiences with Gatsby in the summer of 1922.Nick is also well suited to narrating The Great Gatsby because of his temperament. As he tells the reader in Chapter I, he is tolerant, open-minded, quiet, and a good listener, and, as a result, others tend to talk to him and tell him their secrets. Gatsby, in particular, comes to trust him and treat him as a confidant. Nick generally assumes a secondary role throughout the novel, preferring to describe and comment on events rather than dominate the action. Often, however, he functions as Fitzger ald’s voice, as in his extended meditation on time and the American dream at the end of Chapter IX.Insofar as Nick plays a role inside the narrative, he evidences a strongly mixed reaction to life on the East Coast, one that creates a powerful internal conflict that he does not resolve until the end of the book. On the one hand, Nick is attracted to the fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of New York. On the other hand, he finds that lifestyle grotesque and damaging. This inner conflict is symbolized througho ut the book by Nick’s romantic affair with Jordan Baker. He is attracted to her vivacity and her sophistication just as he is repelled by her dishonesty and her lack of consideration for other people.Nick states that there is a “quality of distortion” to life in New York, and this lifestyle makes him lose his equilibrium, especially early in the novel, as when he gets drunk at Gatsby’s party in Chapter II. After witnessing the unraveling of Gatsby’s dream and presiding over the appalling spectacle of Gatsby’s funeral, Nick realizes that the fast life of revelry on the East Coast is a cover for the terrifying moral emptiness that the valley of ashes symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this insight demonstrates, he returns to Minnesota in search of a quieter life structured by more traditional moral values.Daisy BuchananPartially based on Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, Daisy is a beautiful young woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nick’s cousin and the object of Gatsby’s love. As a young debutante in Louisville, Daisy was extremely popular among the military officers stationed near her home, including Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lied about his background to Daisy, claiming to be from a wealthy family in order to convince her that he was worthy of her. Eventuall y, Gatsby won Daisy’s heart, and they made love before Gatsby left to fight in the war. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she chose instead to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy lifestyle and who had the support of her parents.After 1919, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, making her the single goal of all of his dreams and the main motivation behind his acquisition of immense wealth through criminal activity. To Gatsby, Daisy represents the paragon of perfection—she has the aura of charm, wealth, sophistication, grace, andaristocracy that he longed for as a child in North Dakota and that first attracted him to her. In reality, however, Daisy falls far short of Gatsby’s ideals. She is beautiful and charming, but also fickle, shallow, bored, and sardonic. Nick characterizes her as a careless person who smashes things up and then retreats behind her money. Daisy proves her real nature when she chooses Tom over Gatsby in Chapter VII, then allows Gatsby to take the blame for killing Myrtle Wilson even though she herself was driving the car. Finally, rather than attend Gatsby’s funeral, Daisy and Tom move away, leaving no forwarding address.Like Zelda Fitzgerald, Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is capable of affection (she seems genuinely fond of Nick and occasionally seems to love Gatsby sincerely), but not of sustained loyalty or care. She is indifferent even to her own infant daughter, never discussing her and treating her as an afterthought when she is introduced in Chapter VII. In Fitzgerald’s conception of America in the 1920s, Daisy represents the amoral values of the aristocratic East Egg set.Themes, Motifs & SymbolsThemesThemes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920sOn the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess.Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. A person from any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracy—families with old wealth—scorned the newly rich industrialists and speculators. Additionally, the passage of the EighteenthAmendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social trends. Nick and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the newfound cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from the war. The various social climbers and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsby’s parties evidence the greedy scramble for wealth. The clash between “old money” and “new money” manifests itself in the novel’s symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s fortune s ymbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging.As Fitzgerald saw it (and as Nick explains in Chapter IX), the American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast. The main plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as Gatsby’s dream of loving Daisy is ruined by the difference in their respective social statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough money to impress her, and the rampant materialism that characterizes her lifestyle. Additionally, places and objects in The Great Gatsby have meaning only because characters instill them with meaning: the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg best exemplify this idea. In Nick’s mind, the ability to create meaningful symbols constitutes a central component of the American dream, as early Americans invested their new nation with their own ideals and values.Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. Just as Americans have given America meaning through their dreams for their own lives, Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor p ossesses. Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its object—money and pleasure. Like 1920s Americans in general, fruitlessly seeking a bygone era in which their dreams had value, Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished past—his time in Louisville with Daisy—but is incapable of doing so. When his dream crumbles, all that is left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is move back to Minnesota, where American values have not decayed.The Hollowness of the Upper ClassOne of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth, specifically, how the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from and relate to the old aristocracy of the country’s richest families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes’ invitation to lunch. In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety,and elegance, epitomized by the Buchanans’ tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker.What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in heart, as the East Eggers prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies who are so used to money’s ability to ease their minds that they never worry about hurting others. The Buchanans exemplify this stereotype when, at the end of the novel, they simply move to a new ho use far away rather than condescend to attend Gatsby’s funeral. Gatsby, on the other hand, whose recent wealth derives from criminal activity, has a sincere and loyal heart, remaining outside Daisy’s window until four in the morning in Chapter VII simply to make sure that Tom does not hurt her. Ironically, Gatsby’s good qualities (loyalty and love) lead to his death, as he takes the blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting Daisy be punished, and the Buchanans’ bad qualities (fickleness and selfishness) allow them to remove themselves from the tragedy not only physically but psychologically.MotifsMotifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.GeographyThroughout the novel, places and settings epitomize the various aspects of the 1920s American society that Fitzgerald depicts. East Egg represents the old aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich, the valley of ashes the moral and social decay of America, and New York City the uninhibited, amoral quest for money and pleasure. Additionally, the East is connected to the moral decay and social cynicism of New York, while the West (including Midwestern and northern areas such as Minnesota) is connected to more traditional social values and ideals. Nick’s analysis in Chapter IX of the story he has related reveals his sensitivity to this dichotomy: though it is set in the East, the story is really one of the West, as it tells how people originally from west of the Appalachians (as all of the main characters are) react to the pace and style of life on the East Coast.WeatherAs in much of Shakespeare’s work, the weather in The Great Gatsby unfailingly matches the emotional and narrative tone of the story. Gatsby and Daisy’s reunion begins amid a pouring rain, proving awkward and melancholy; their love reawakens just as the sun begins to come out. Gatsby’s climactic confrontation with Tom occurs on the hottest day of the summer, under the scorching sun (like the fatal encounter between Mercutio and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet). Wilson kills Gatsby on the first day of autumn, as Gatsby floats in his pool despite a palpable chill in the air—a symbolic attempt to stop time and restore his relationship with Daisy to the way it was five years before, in 1917.SymbolsSymbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.。

SYMBOLISM IN THE GREAT GATSBYA Thesispresented toThe College of Foreign Languages Chongqing University of Posts and TelecommunicationsIn Partial Fulfillmentof the Requirements for the Degree ofBachelor of ArtsByYang ChunmeiJune 2014摘要象征主义是十九世纪末法国重要的文学思潮。

第一次世界大战前，它传播到欧洲多个艺术领域，许多作家认为，任何事物都应该有相应的内涵，内心世界和外部世界是相互渗透的，人们可以挖掘出隐藏在象征本体里的一切象征意义，因此，它提倡人们可以使用大量的意象来暗示微妙的内心世界，并将它们有机融合在一起。

《了不起的盖茨比》是弗·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德最具代表性和最受欢迎的作品之一，长期以来国内外众多学者从不同角度进行研究。

它强烈抨击了美国20世纪20年代物质主义盛行，人们内心世界的腐败和道德沦丧的社会现状。

作者巧妙地运用象征手法向读者展示一个灯绿梦渺的美国梦。

弗·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德挑选出小说中最能代表美国20世纪20年代期间社会现状的典型人物，通过他们各自对价值观截然不同的反应和所采取的行为，以此表明美国梦破灭的必然性。

关键词：象征主义；美国梦；物质主义；幻灭ABSTRACTSymbolism was regarded as an important literary trend in France at the end of the nineteenth century. Before World War I, it spread to various art fields in Europe, the writers who were for it believed that anything should have corresponding meaning, the inner world and outer world were inducted each other, and people can dig out hidden symbolism from everything. Therefore, it advocated that people can use substantial images to suggest the subtle inner world, and blend two of them together skillfully, one of the unique charms in the novel The Great Gatsby is the abundant use of symbols．In the novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses symbols to depict the various characters and deepen the theme; he connects the visual real world with the abstract inner world by using masses of potential symbolism, showing readers characteristics, personality as well as charms of protagonists vividly; meanwhile, the proper use of symbolism adds up infinite art charm and enhances ideological implication of the work, making the novel loved by a great number of readers.The Great Gatsby is one of the most representative and popular works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, it strongly criticizes the rich’s priority for materialism and the loss of morality as well as their corruption of the inner world，also in the novel the social reality of the United States in 1920s is deeply exposed with numerous symbols by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In order to show readers a lively and bright plot, he elaborately arranges each section, taking the protagonists for example, F. Scott Fitzgerald picks out the most typical characters from different social classes in the novel to reflect their respective values during 1920s in the United States, according to their different reactions and behaviors towards materialism and morality, the author aims to indicate the inevitable tragedy and evaporation of the American dream.Key words: symbolism, the American Dream, materialism, evaporationOutlineTitle: Symbolism in The Great GatsbyThesis Statement: Symbols in The Great Gatsby represent Gatsby’s disillusions of the American Dream as well as the social moral loss.1. Introduction2. Symbolism of Colors2.1 Green: Dream and Hope2.2 White: Innocence and Beauty VS Evil and Horror2.3 Blue: Gloom, Peace and Fantasy2.4 Yellow: Power, Wealth and Status3. Symbolism of Protagonists3.1 Daisy: Selfishness and Materialism3.2 Gatsby: visionary and tragic3.3 Nick: onlooking and Injustice4. The American Dream in The Great Gatsby4.1 The American Dream4.2 Disillusion of the American Dream4.3 Inevitable Evaporation of the American Dream5. ConclusionBibliography1 IntroductionThe United States had an unprecedented economic prosperity after World War I, the life quality of people showed an uprising trend, while their mental world was descending sharply under the brand--new social environment, that is, the younger generation of America were addicted to hedonism regardless of the traditional religious beliefs and morality, they indulge themselves in the unprincipled recreation, excessively emphasizing on materials but ignoring mentality, which resulted in the disillusion of the American dream.The publication of The Great Gatsby in 1925 is the reflection of “the Jazz Age” –“the period from 1918-1929, the years between the end of World War I and the start of the roaring twenties; ending with the rise of the Great Depression, the traditional values of this age see a sharp decline while the great American stock market soars.” (Wikipedia: the Jazz age) F. Scot Fitzgerald uses a unique narration way to describe hero—Gatsby’s life. As a narrator, Nick is tired of his hometown—Midwest life and comes to New York. He rents a small apartment in the suburb of West Egg. He is Daisy’s cousin, and neighbor of Gatsby who owns a luxurious mansion. Gatsby and Daisy once love each other when they are young, but end up with Gatsby’s poverty. Then he joins World War I, and Daisy marries Tom Buchanan—a wealthy guy and they give birth to a daughter. Five years later, the Buchanan move from Chicago to the west, and Nick starts to have frequent contacts with the Buchanan; during five years, Gatsby accumulates amounts of wealth by means of illegal activity and comes to New York following Daisy. He buys a luxurious villa—Gatsby mansion. Each Saturday he would hold a grand party to attract the married Daisy, fancying arousing her notice and restart the relationship. On an accidental occasion, Gatsby learns that Nick is Daisy’s cousin, so he begs Nick to arrange a meeting for them. After that date, both Daisy and Gatsby have frequent date. However, he gradually realizes that Daisy is vane and secular not as what she used tobe, Gatsby’s beautiful dream finally breaks, but he still insists on her and has a glimmer of fantasy, which makes him suffer from a miserable outcome in the end. Later, Daisy drives Gatsby’s car to run over and kills Tom’s mistress Myrtle Wilson after drunk driving, but Tom and Daisy put the blame on Gatsby with conspiracy brutally, resulting in Gatsby’s death by George Wilson’s gun shot. While Daisy and Tom travel to Europe, there are only two people—Nick and Gatsby’s father to attend Gatsby’s funeral. Gatsby becomes a victim of selfish and cruel Daisy.F. Scott Fitzgerald describes a picture of tragic American dream with poetic language and ample colors. There are many symbols in the novel. Symbolism will be analyzed respectively from the following aspects: colors, protagonists and the American Dream will be mentioned.2 Symbolism of ColorsAmong so many symbols in the novel, most of which are colors: white represents purity, innocence and emptiness, depravation; during the process of describing Gatsby’s dream, green night becomes an important image, it means not only dream and hope, but also a bubble; besides, yellow means wealth, status and evil, and so on. The following part will illustrate different colors thoroughly.2.1 GreenGreen is the color of nature, representing hope and dream. When he is seventeen, Gatsby wears a shabby green sweater, presenting an optimistic and hopeful image; when he falls in love with Daisy deeply, however, Gatsby is too poor to marry her. Daisy immediately marries a millionaire –Tom Buchanan. So Gatsby struggles out from the bottom of society, though, he is not for a life of luxurious and material comforts, but for the “pure love”, which is an ideal and indescribable romantic illusion, a permanent expectation for him. After Gatsby makes a fortune, he is still obsessed with his love—Daisy, he spares no effort to attract and pursue Daisy, since it is his only dream, in his mind, Daisy symbolizes all of what he dreams, in a word, Daisy is his hope, goals and incardination of love.And again at the end of the novel, it refers to green:“Gatsby believes in the green night: the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before Man, it eludes Man then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow Man will run faster, stretch out his arms farther…and one fine morning.”(Fitzgerald2013:113)here the symbolism of green night is American’s enthusiastic and reckless pursuit for the illusory American Dream. In Gatsby’s eyes, green night is his guide on the one hand, which makes him feel his dream is on the way and easy to grasp; on the other hand, it is so attractive, twinkling, and vague. Finally, when his ultimate dream is lost, the green light that symbolizes hope disappears forever from him, which leads to the access to dream becoming adark journey. F. Scott Fitzgerald links it with Gatsby’s blind pursuit for Daisy purposely, making the green light have an obvious irony. F. Scott Fitzgerald suggests that the American Dream is devastated by the excessive pursuit for materials, contributing to a futile effort. Green is Gatsby’s hope, but it is his impractical pursuit for the green light that results in his tragedy.2.2 YellowYellow is a symbol of power, wealth and luxury. It is one of the most widely used colors in the novel. In order to regain his true love, Gatsby conveys abundant information all the time to Daisy: his gorgeous and expensive car that he takes is yellow; his tie that he wears while dating with Daisy is golden; his cars, food, bars that he owns when he holds various, luxurious, grand, illuminated banquets, are all yellow; his comb that is shown to Daisy is also purely golden; In addition, Daisy is regarded as the golden girl, her name is a kind of flower with the color of yellow ; Jordan Baker has a withered golden hair, and his arms are golden; two of girls in the banquets are with golden skirts; it is the golden cocktail music that is played in the banquets all the time; All of the yellow symbols represent a noisy, wealthy and money-oriented atmosphere, it seems that everywhere in the society is full of the color of yellow.During the Jazz age, money is a symbol of success and status, people would rather desert their own moral conception and deceive each other without guilty just for money. In a word, yellow becomes seductive and charming, while Gatsby’s tragedy results in the golden lie, he struggles for the color all of his life, but his dream is destroyed at last. In such case, yellow symbolizes the characteristics of the society and the destiny of people.2.3 WhiteWhite generally symbolizes purity and innocence, but in the novel, it symbolizes horror and loneliness. The first time Daisy runs into Gatsby, she wears white clothes and drives a white car, which indicates that Daisy is pure and elegant, but Daisy’s inner heart is hollow and shallow; she lives in a white palace-stylebuilding and the curtains are white, all of which are a symbol of Daisy’s tiresome and empty spirit. White is a cold color, taking Daisy’s heart for instance, Gatsby almost uses up all of his youth and passion for her, including sacrificing himself, but she is so cold that ignores what Gatsby does for her and takes it for granted. In the eastern part of material world, her strong desire for money and material things has already twisted her into a greedy, selfish and vulgar woman.Besides, from the perspective of Gatsby, there are also a lot of symbols related to the white color: the villa that Gatsby buys and the suits that he wears, which means that he is as hollow as Daisy, he has nothing to do but pursue Daisy, even Gatsby owns more and more wealth, he has no way to save Daisy’s degraded soul, because it is the nature of Daisy. Gatsby spends his whole life on unpractical illusions, to some degree, he is rather stupid. Therefore, the color of white in the novel has a strong irony too.2.4 BlueBlue is the color of the sky and the sea, which means a broad scale, while it also means gloom and depression. In the novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald describes something connected with dream and unreality. He uses blue to describe Gatsby’s house: blue lawn that is an important part in his life, and blue garden; Gatsby also gets a blue navy clothes from the captain due to his upright characteristics. All of these symbolize Gatsby’s dream and melancholy.In Chapter two of the novel,the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue, with bleak look, watching the gray valley, indicating an unfortunate disaster. In the author’s opinion, this is God’s eyes; she knows that Gatsby’s dream is doomed to fail, so her eyes are sad and gloomy. And George Wilson believes that Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s eyes are existence of God. After his wife dies by conspiracy:“He muttered, after a long silence. “I told her she might fool me but she couldn’tfool God. I took her to the window’—with an effort he got up and walked to therear window and leaned with his face pressed against it—‘and I said, “Godknows what you have been doing, everything you have been doing. You may foolme, but you cannot fool God!”’ standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shockthat he was looking at the blue eyes of doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which had justemerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night. ” (Fitzgerald 2013:100) In other words, F. Scott Fitzgerald presents the symbolisms of various colors vividly, green, on one hand, represents Gatsby’s hope and dream, he is as energetic as others; on the other hand, it seems like a prediction that Gatsby is doomed to fail. Yellow stands for wealth and status in the novel. Gatsby makes effort to climb up and accumulate money in order to cater for Daisy and prove that he also belongs to the upper class; actually, he never realizes his illusion from the beginning to the end. White is a symbol of horror and ignorant, Daisy is a typical epitome of the Jazz age. Blue is a symbol of gloom and depression in the novel. Doctor T. J. Eckleburg’s blue eyes seem to indicate the tragedy of all the people. Besides symbolisms of colors, the symbols of protagonists are worth analyzing.3 Symbolism of the ProtagonistsIt is evident that a vivid description of main character plays a key role in advancing the plots. The Great Gatsby selects several typical protagonists to reflect their different characteristics and values, and imply the hedonism during the Jazz age.3.1 DaisyDaisy is the heroine in the novel; she is Gatsby’s dream love. As a typical material girl, she is a symbol of money. She is a girl with beautiful appearance, attractive eyes, and erogenous voice. Five years ago, the poor Gatsby falls in love with the wealthy girl at the first sight, but he is so poor that he cannot afford the wedding expenses, they have to end the relationship finally. Because in Daisy’s eyes, money is the only judge to measure anything, love is no exception. For her, money is the only almighty God, the true, the good, and the beautiful are not qualified to surpass it. Daisy once loves him, but when she finds Gatsby is penniless, she never hesitates to abandon him and turns to Tom who is wealthy and illustrious but vulgar. In the material world, Gatsby’s love with Daisy is fragile and vulnerable. Daisy believes that love is not the bread of life, she is eager to live an abundant and carefree life. Actually, she is the incardination of the American Dream, which looks beautiful and pure, almost close to touch, but it is just an illusion, and finally vanishes.Though she owns abundant materials, she is very lonely and empty. While Nick has come to dinner with her family, when Tom and Jordan are chatting in another room, she uncovers her mask, tells all of her inner feelings sincerely. She complains about her unhappiness. Besides, in her daily life, although he often says something that seems to be foolish and jokes with others, she arms herself, pretends herself to be happy and live an ideal life like a carefree child, actually, she is unhappy, and no one is reliable for her to share her miserable life except Nick.3.2 GatsbyGatsby, the hero of the novel, is a sheer dreamer. He is the symbol of the American younger generation after the First World War I. Gatsby’s pursuit and evaporation for dream are also what the youth dream: individually heroic ideal and the miraculous American Dream makes them believe that one can reach their own inner world that they yearn for only if they try their effort, so they come to the world with hope, looking forward to establishing a kingdom of their own in the new world, but eventually they find that what they desire and pursue are just self-deceptive, the American Dream is never to be achieved. In his short life time, he uses all kinds of means to pursue Daisy, but what a pity is that even though he costs too much to win her heart, he is killed by his beloved indirectly, and even no one is willing to attend his funeral. From the beginning to the end, he is blindfold in his own relationship; he has never experienced the true love. At the age of 17 to 18, Gatsby regards young ladies as ignorance, so he looks down upon the girls, but poor Gatsby only loves Daisy crazily, in his eyes, Daisy is beautiful, and she has an outstanding family background, Gatsby is the only one that attracts Daisy among so many suitors, here it can be seen that Gatsby loves not Daisy herself but the wealth and social status that Daisy stands for, he eagerly climbs up to upper class, so he thinks that he loves Daisy not anything else, but it can be inferred that Gatsby is trapped into the hypocritical love without self-conscious. In order to win Daisy, he takes various illegal measures to accumulate amounts of wealth. After reunion with Daisy, who is a frivolous and materialistic person, Gatsby tries to invite her to his villa just to show how rich he is now. In his mind, Daisy is the incarnation of a holy and pure heart, just like her white skirt, even Gatsby finds Daisy is a secular woman, not the same one as she used to be, but he doesn’t want to give her up. Actually, Gatsby just wants to use wealth, materials and Daisy to mask his poor birth, and win the social recognition and admiration. In Gatsby's mind, as long as there are material wealth and social status, he can regain Daisy, and he can prove his self—value. Gatsby, through illegal means to win a huge amount of wealth, makes up his personal life, so that he can achieve his dream.After Gatsby makes material success, then he has been very close to achieve the dream, he has almost caught the dream. But the very moment, everything is destroyed. Gatsby should have realized that his dreams are entirely on the basis of material; his pursuit of an illusory ideal just makes him realize that Daisy's mind is full of money, but he never understands they belong to different worlds, representing different values. And his total unconsciousness is destined to die. But in the process of interaction for Nick and the gang, even though he has contempt and disdains Gatsby, Gatsby treats love sincerely and selflessly.3.3 NickNick, as both the story teller and the moral judge, he has an irreplaceable place in the novel; he is indispensable to the progression of the story as well as to the in-depth exposure of the American Dream. Nick, as the novel's first narrator, in this novel, he has created a kind of immersive feeling that is rising up, making the whole novel not only fascinating but also more dramatic. He observes all of what happens to Gatsby, as Gatsby’s friend and neighbor, Daisy’s cousin, Tom’s classmate, he has an inextricable link with them. He cannot stand the eastern United States because of the vague and moral indifference, he witnesses the destruction of Gatsby’s growing, all the disappointment and disgust for the eastern community, and in the course, in order to further improve and standardize his own responsibility and morality, he decides to go back west. What happens in the eastern part of the story that makes Nick feel so disappointed and disgus ted is that something swallows Gatsby’s spiritual things and makes him temporarily lose interest in any temporary moment of joy and sorrow, so that he is no longer interested in participating in swollen treasures, and no longer occasionally catches the glimpse of the human heart's honor. He feels disgusted about the reality, but he is also immersed in the ugly environment, he describes Gatsby as a great man even though he sells wine illegally and pursues Daisy in an inappropriate way. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”(Fitzgerald, 2013:1)According to his narration and comment, Nick shows a totally different type of life style between Gatsby and Daisy.In a sense, Daisy, from the beginning to the end, is a wretch, she never experiences a true love, for her, wealth and status are more important than love, she pursues something illusory in her whole life, which causes her empty and ignorant life. Gatsby and Nick, in the realization of their own American dream on the road, are losers. Gatsby, although achieves the material success, in spirit he collapses; Nick has been purified, although in spirit and perfection, but never gets the measure of success from the perspective of worldly material wealth. In the final analysis, all the three people are the victim of the American dream, which results in their tragedy.4 The American Dream in The Great GatsbyFor Americans, American dream is a faith that a person can achieve what he is eager for only if striving as much as possible, success would be on the way. Actually, it is not enough. The following parts will analyze the breakdown of American dream, the disillusion of American dream as well as the inevitable evaporation of American dream in detail.4.1 The American DreamWhen it comes to the breakdown of American Dream, there are two notable people that should be noticed.One is Norman Mailer. his fourth novel—An American Dream (1966),The book is written in a poetic style with metaphor that creates unique and hypnotizing narrative and dialogue. Mailer peels away the layers of the social norms to reveal a world of pure appetite and relentless cruelty.The other one is Edward Albee. He feels the reality of American society cannot be compromised and must be disclosed. In his play The American Dream (1961), he ironically criticizes people who only go for external things rather than seeking the practical, to meet the appearance of bodybuilding but ignore the internal weakness.Actually, The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that “all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”(Wikipedia: the United States Declaration of Independence)The American Dream is based on an ideal realm that everyone can develop their ability and finally become successful only if they are continuously making their own efforts; it is an equal opportunity to expect success in spite of family background. Americans have traditionally believed that only through hardwork, will they change destiny and obtain wealth. The American Dream is originally to achieve the dual progress in spirit and materials; however, it is gradually replaced by sheer money and pleasure. The American Dream is bait for encouraging young men to struggle and fight, and then can get what they seeks for. In fact, it is just an illusion that never comes true. Although it can make people inspired and enhance morale, it disappears quickly. The tragedy Gatsby can illustrate the point. Gatsby is embodied in the conflict of American life’s dream and reality; he is always living in his own fantasy and regarding it as reality, even pursuing it persistently. He was born poor, but he is eager for a better life.4.2 Disillusion of the American DreamFor each American, the American dream is a hope for success, it is a ladder from penniless to wealthy, and it attracts people to go to west and tries to become millionaires. Until the nineteenth century, the accumulation of wealth and material prosperity of the country suddenly gets to an unprecedented expansion, the American Dream is no longer full of positive and moral energy, spiritual need and material need are strongly conflicted, and people own more and more wealth but declined morality. The Great Gatsby is just the real description of the American society in 1920s, during which all traditional values turn into pure and mad pursuit for money. Gatsby’s dream is to combine love and money, at first, the reason why he pursues money is just to become wealthy and successful, and then he is to pursue his dream—the fantastic love, the two dreams belong to “love dream”. Therefore, the evaporation of love dream means all of his dreams are evaporated. Since Gatsby has rich materials, he is eager for restarting with Daisy. However, the American Dream cannot become true only with amounts of wealth in America; even Daisy is an ambitious, selfish, hypocritical and material girl, nevertheless, Gatsby regards her as the incardination of perfection, and pursues her at all costs, actually, it is just an illusion that cannot be realized. But he continues to chase the unrealistic dream blindly, which leads to his tragedy.4.3 Inevitable Evaporation of the American DreamThe Great Gatsby is considered as one of the typical American novel to reflect the atmosphere of the Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgerald describes Gatsby, the hero of the novel, as a “great” man, because he has no other dream except for love, although he also has many deficiencies and does illegal wine making, from the beginning to the end in the novel, Gatsby has only one goal, that is pursuing Daisy in spite of any obstacles, just because of the “great” goal, he is able to accumulate amounts of wealth to the upper social status. However, in the postwar era, true love is difficult to pursue, material is beyond love; in addition, Gatsby even sacrifices himself for his love, Gatsby is to Daisy what Americans are to the American dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald describes the image of Daisy deliberately to reveal the disillusion of American dream, Daisy’s beauty means the American Dream is attractive and attempting, and Daisy’s selfishness and emptiness means the American Dream is unrealistic and nonsense. Gatsby is incapable to distinguish the reality and the dream, so he spends the whole life in pursuing the illusion and creating a fantastic world. He only realizes that even though Daisy’s voice is full of money, he never realizes that they belong to totally different worlds and stands for various values. What makes Gatsby tragic is that he contributes his beautiful ideal to a superficial girl, the destroying of Gatsby’s illusion means the disillusion of the American Dream, his tragedy also reflects the author’s and the American dream pursuers’ tragedy. Gatsby and Daisy have different social statuses, for them, there is an insurmountable division, indicating his inevitable tragedy.5 ConclusionsIn the novel The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald successfully shapes an image of the victim--Gatsby, who has no connection with the upper class, but he becomes a millionaire through illegal means at last; From the perspective of materials, he is successful; but he fails in the unrealistic illusion; while Tom and Daisy stands for the upper class, but they have little morality, responsibility and dream, they are so poor in mental wealth. Through the novel, it seems to be an ordinary love story of Daisy and Gatsby to love and break up, but the author describes the girl as a symbol of youth, money and status who just pursues material wealth. In order to pursue his love, Gatsby pours into all his feelings and intellect, he is too naïve to believe that money is omnipotent including gaining love. Unfortunately, Daisy is a vulgar and selfish girl, he is not aware of the reality of the materialistic redundancy but spiritual boredom, he lives in fantasy, abandoned by Daisy and ignored by the society, which finally causes irreparable outcome, he is a typical American young man in 1920s, what happens to him is a portrayal of splurge century. F. Scott Fitzgerald deeply exposes the sharp social contradiction in the Jazz Age of America behind the economic prosperity and the serious moral crisis faced by the Lost Generation, and reveals the nature of American life with strong responsibility, he describes a real American situation in the 1920s. The Great Gatsby is like a dream, F. Scott Fitzgerald deliberately designs each image, on one hand, it symbolizes the tragedy of Gatsby’s life; on the other hand, it contains the ups and downs of the American Dream. It is a real portrayal of the younger generation’s disillusion and anxiety in the Jazz Age, and his dream becomes a permanent historical mirror to the era.。

写一篇外国文学名著梗概作文八百字英文回答：The Great Gatsby is a classic novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story is set in the 1920s and follows thelife of Jay Gatsby, a wealthy and mysterious man who throws extravagant parties at his mansion in Long Island. The narrator, Nick Carraway, moves in next door to Gatsby and becomes drawn into his world of wealth, love, and deception. Gatsby is in love with Daisy Buchanan, a married woman he met before he went off to war. He has spent years amassing his fortune in the hopes of winning her back. The novel explores themes of the American Dream, love, and the corrupting influence of wealth.The story takes a tragic turn when Gatsby's past is revealed, and his love for Daisy leads to devastating consequences. The novel ends with a sense ofdisillusionment and the realization that the American Dream is unattainable for many.中文回答：《了不起的盖茨比》是弗·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德的经典小说。