An Analysis of Gatsby’s American Dream 分析盖茨比的美国梦
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An Analysis of Gatsby’s American Dream分析盖茨比的美国梦Abstract:The American Dream, sometimes in the phrase "Chasing the American Dream," is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole. The novel portrays the unsatisfied desire under the covering of the success and wealth, reflects the corruption of the American Dream in 1920s. It describes the conflicts and contradiction in the heart of the characters profoundly.The present paper analyses the reasons of Gatsby’s failure through the characters’ description and the affairs related to Gatsby. And it combines the character with symbolism to reveal the theme in a vivid way.Key words: The Jazz Age; American Dream; symbolism摘要：美国梦，有时也说“追逐美国梦”，是美国二十世纪二十年代的社会思潮，包括对财富和成功的渴望。
《了不起的盖茨比》在当时是描写美国梦的代表作。
小说揭露了人们对成功和财富不满足的欲望，反映了美国梦的腐败，深刻地描绘了中心人物之间的冲突和矛盾。
本文通过人物描写和有关盖茨比的事件，分析了盖茨比美国梦的失败，并结合象征主义手法来生动的表现主题。
关键字：爵士乐时代；美国梦；象征主义ContentsI. Introduction (1)II. Brief Introduction of the Background (2)III. General Understanding of American Dream (3)A. Its Origin and Development (3)B. Gatsby’s American Dream (3)IV. Analysis of the American Dream Though Characters and the Symbols (5)A. The Main Characters (5)B. Literary Symbols (6)V. Analysis of Gatsby’s American Dream (8)A. Gatsby’s Struggle for American Dream (8)B. The Failure of Gatsby’s American Dream (8)VI. Conclusion (9)Works Cited (10)AcknowledgementsMy sincere gratitude first goes to Ms. , my supervisor, for her constructive suggestions, valuable ideas, great patience and encouragement. Without her help, the completion of this thesis would have been impossible.I owe great gratitude to all the teachers in the English Department. Their lectures and instructions have been of great help to my study.I would also like to express my thanks to my friends for their constant concern, generous help, and meaningful comments on the study.Finally, I must say I owe gratitude to my parents. Their love and encouragement have supported me to overcome difficulties and achieve the final success.I. IntroductionThe Great Gatsby is written by American author F. Scott. Fitzgerald, who is considered a member of the “lost generation” of the Twenties. It was first published on 1925.The Great Gatsby shows us a vivid picture of the 1920s with the superficial prosperity.The following is the main plot of the novel. A young man named Nick Caraway, who came to New York City in spring of 1922. He became involved in the life of his neighbor at Long Island, Jay Gatsby, a very rich man, who entertained hundreds of guests at his party. Gatsby revealed to Nick, that he fell in love with Nick's cousin Daisy before the war. At that time he was poor. However, Daisy married Tom Buchanan, a rich but boring man of good social position. Gatsby lost Daisy because he had no money, but he was still in love with her. He persuaded Nick to bring him and Daisy together again. "You can't repeat the past," Nick said to him (Fitzgerald 35). Gatsby tried to convince Daisy to leave Tom, who, in turn, revealed that Gatsby has made his money from bootlegging. So they asked Daisy whom she loved. Daisy began to sob helplessly: “I did love him once-but I loved you too.” Daisy, driving Gatsby's car, hit and killed Tom's mistress, Myrtle Wilson, unaware of her identity. Gatsby remained silent to protect Daisy. Tom told Myrtle's husband Wilson it was Gatsby who killed his wife. Wilson murdered Gatsby and then committed suicide. Nick was left to arrange Gatsby's funeral, attended only Gatsby's father and one former guest. Nick returned to his Midwest home, reflecting on Gatsby's dreams and the sad and cyclical nature of the past.This paper includes character analyses, and their inimitable symbols, combines many different opinions relating to Gatsby to understand the inevitable failure of American dream.II. Brief Introduction of the BackgroundThroughout the 1920s, Americans were living in one of the eras of the greatest change. There were many factors that made it different from any other periods, the most important was the World War I, that the first time America involved the foreign affairs. The war gave the impact on that period profoundly. The people went into the war with an unusual amount of enthusiasm, inspired by the ideal of making the world safe for democracy. The United States made a large amount of money for selling munitions and became the richest country in the world, which made people feel that money was everywhere, and everyone also had opportunity to earn that of them. The trend of social revolution was going on. Old moral codes were breaking down. Therefore, the following decades after the war were a time of national prosperity, personal freedom and the pursuit of pleasure.The writer lived in the 1920s met a new challenge to their stable code of values, they got lost, acknowledged as “Lost Generation”, because of the reason the American literature achieved a new diversity and its greatest heights. The Great Gatsby published in 1925, the chronicle life in the Jazz Age for a group of wealthy young people living in New York. Gatsby’s luxury car, his lavish parties and the reckless behavior of his guests were all clues of this atmosphere of gaiety and wild enjoyment. The description of the crimes and sandals in the Jazz Age was related to the wild celebration, illegal gambling and bootlegging, were rife in the United States at the time and led to will spread corruption. This background of crime and illegal deals had been shown in this novel.The steadily prosperity of 1920s gave quick rise to gross materialism which occupied people’s mind. And everyone addicted this atmosphere of self-indulgence. Fitzgerald described the lavish celebrities in Gatsby’s house reflected the characters of the society.III. General Understanding of American DreamA. Its Origin and developmentThe earliest and most general meaning of the North American continent suggested fresh starts and infinite possibilities. Men in Europe felt strong yearning to the West. They wanted to get away from the old continent to get rich. This search for freedom and happiness actually goes back to the very beginning of American civilization. The first settlers were all religious emigrants who were driven to the New World by persecution. To these people, American represented a new life of freedom, holding a promise of spiritual and material happiness, so that they would be free from all of the repressive hierarchies of the Old World, free from the systems of control by kings, priests and great landowners. For those settlers who were not so religiously willing, America was still a fairyland, a land of great possibilities. And so the first thirteen colonies came into being, amidst the religious and materialistic hopes of the first settlers. The American Dream of freedom and progress kept pace with religious and spiritual goals.The American Dream, however, originally relates to a desire for spiritual and material improvement. What happened was that, from one point of view, the material aspect of the dream was too easily and too quickly achieved, with the result that it soon outpaced and even destroyed the early spiritual life or purpose. From another point of view, the American Dream has totally failed to bring any kind of fulfillment, whether spiritual or material. For all the progress and prosperity, for all the declaration of democratic principles, these are still poverty, discrimination and exploitation. And as for the values and morality, there are also hypocrisy, corruption and suppression. A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald introduces us a clear background of that time (Curnutt).B. Gatsby’s American DreamFrom his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty and longed for wealth and sophistication. Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love for Daisy Buchanan. 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 anattempt 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.IV. Analysis of the Characters and the symbolsA. The Main Characters1. GatsbyFitzgerald is born in a large city, St. Paul, Minnesota, from an upper middle-class family. Gatsby’s family is not clearly described in the novel. From his early youth, Gatsby hates poverty and longs for wealth and sophistication. He even drops out of St.Olaf College after only two weeks because he can not bear the hard job with which he pays his tuition. Fitzgerald drops out of university and join the army. Gatsby meets Daisy as a young military officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in the First World War. He immediately falls in love with Daisy’s luxury, grace, and charm. But he is refused in the beginning because of his poverty. Gatsby manages to get rich by any means in order to win Daisy back. Gatsby does not mention anything about his father. Gatsby’s father does not appear until the end of the story, after Gatsby’s death. “It was Gatsby’s father, a serious old man, very helpless and dismayed, bundled up in a long cheap luster against the warm September day”(Fitzgerald 23). Gatsby wants to hide his family background as well as his father. This is the secret kept by Gatsby in his life.Gatsby transforms himself into the ideal that he imagines for himself as a youngster and remains committed to that ideal, to the fulfillment of his dream, despite the obstructions that society presents. After he becomes a rich, he begins his lavish life. As a host, Gatsby supports his guests as God supports or endures us. Nick narrates Gatsby’s party in the beginning of chapter IV: “On Sunday Morning while church bells rang in the villages along shore, the world and its mistress returned to Gatsby’s house and twinkled joyful on his lawn” (Fitzgerald 81). 2. NickAlthough Nick Caraway is not the hero of the novel, his importance as the narrator and as a functional character makes him almost as much a central figure as Gatsby himself. Nick is a young man from the American Midwest. He is a restless person like many other people of his generation and He wants to learn the bond business in New York and to earn his livings. He rents a house next to Mr. Gatsby’s. But when he witnesses the reaction of Jordan and the Buchanan to Gatsby’s death, Nick quickly develops a full sense of moral responsibility. Herealizes he can no longer endure the moral viciousness that lies beneath the wealth and sophistication of eastern society, and so he returns to the Middle West, after carefully fulfilling his personal responsibilities.Nick as the hidden author reflects half of the portrait of the writer, Fitzgerald. If Gatsby represents one part of Fitzgerald’s personality, the flashy celebrity who pursued and praised wealth in order to impress the woman he loved, then Nick represents another part: the quiet, reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East. Nick functions as the observer and commentator, sees what has gone wrong in The Great Gatsby. As a moral symbol he is also the embodiment of a hope for moral and spiritual growth, functioning as Fitzgerald’s voice in making his ultimate value judgments.B. Literary symbols1. GatsbyAs a romantic dreamer who seeks to fulfill his ideal by amassing wealth as a racketeer, Gatsby is a symbol for the whole American experience. His aim, in effect, is to transfigure money into love---a symbolist dream, an assault on reality. The corruption of his dream by adopting materialism as its means and illusory youth and beauty as its goal is the corruption of American idealism. In the end Gatsby is destroyed by his illusion just as surely as the American landscape has been converted into a ghastly “valley of ashes.” In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald powerfully shows the emptiness of American materialism, and the impossibility of achieving the American Dream.2. The Green LightSituated at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsby’s West Egg lawn, the green light represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and “in Chapter 1 he reaches toward it in the da rkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. In Chapter 9, Nick compares the green light to how America, rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the new nation” (“The Symbols”).3. The Valley of AshesFirst introduced in Chapter 2, the valley of ashes between West Egg and New York City consists of a long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes. “It represents the moral and social decay that results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves with regard for nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of ashes also symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result” (“The Symbols”).V. Analysis of Gatsby’s American DreamA. Gatsby’s Struggle for American DreamBecoming wealthy is the most important for love affair. Large fortune cannot have been obtained honestly. Gatsby does business with Wolfsheim, a gambler and he makes lots of money also from distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities.After earning money, Gatsby gets luxurious possessions. Also Gatsby makes him famous around New York. He holds elaborate parties every weekend at his mansion. The party is almost unbelievably luxurious, “looks like the World Fair.” He m akes friends with who are famous. When Daisy goes to his party and exclaims, “I never met so many celebrities” (Fitzgerald 86).Of course, to win his love, Gatsby makes him elegant and noble too. He studied in Oxford University.B. The Failure of Gatsby’s American DreamFrom the point of view that American political ideals conflict with the actual social conditions that exist, whereas American democracy is based on the idea of equality among people, the truth is that social discrimination still exists and the divisions among the classes cannot be overcome (Wenku).Gatsby’s failure is related to his idealism, his faith in life’s possibilities. Undoubtedly, his desire is also influenced by social considerations. Daisy, who is wealthy and beautiful, represents a way of life which is remote from Gatsby’s and therefore more attractive because it is out of reach. However, social consciousness is not a basic cause. Gatsby struggle to fit himself into another social group, but his attempt is more urgent because his whole career, his confidence in himself and in life is totally shattered when he fails to win Daisy. His death is almost insignificant, with the collapse of his dream, Gatsby is already spiritually dead. Fitzgerald goes on to state the failure of hopes and dreams, the failure of the American Dream itself, is unavoidable, not only because reality can not keep up with ideals, but also because the ideals are in any case usually too fantastic to be realized. The heroic presentation of Gatsby, therefore, should not be taken at face value, for we cannot overlook the fact that Gatsby is innocent, impractical and over sentimental. It is this that makes him attempt the impossible, to repeat the past. There is something pitiful and absurd about the way he refuses to grow up.VI. ConclusionThe American dream is that one can pursue their goals in life through hard work and moral righteousness. But in 1920s, as this novel The Great Gatsby published, the American economy soared. People began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. The unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed the other more noble goals. The various social climbers and ambitious speculators scramble for wealth greedily. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald of The Great Gatsby portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, roaring jazz age, evidenced in its cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of 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. 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 (吴建国，55-63).But Gatsby is a young man who has his own dream, although he is poor and plain. To face the cruel reality, he does not surrender to the fate and he still struggle for his ambition. His passion and persistence inspire us to pursue our dreams. Dream is one of the most shining things of our life, which stimulates the steps of life. When we meet some difficulties in our study and life, Gatsby’s spirits stimulate us to surpass ourselves.Works CitedCurnutt, Kirk, ed. A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925. Sparknotes. “The Symbols in The Great Gatsby.”16 May 2010. 10 June 2011 </lit/gatsby/themes.html>.Wenku，“从《了不起的盖茨比》看美国梦的幻灭”，2011年5月27日，2011年6月10日</view/6f79a880e53a580216fcfe63.html>.吴建国，《菲茨杰拉德研究》，辽宁：辽宁教育出版社，2002年。
