肖琳 闫佳洋
重庆师范大学
Ⅰ. About the Writer
Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896 ~ 1940) was an American novelist, whose father is a furniture dealer. He tried out a play in his youth. After finishing high school, he was admitted to Princeton University. At school, he formed a theater troupe and wrote for the school's literary publications. He dropped out of school due to poor health. After that, he joined the army in 1917 and was busy with military training. He never went abroad to fight. After leaving the army, he insisted on writing part-time.
He became famous in 1920 after the publication of his novel Paradise on Earth, which led to his marriage to Giselda. After marriage, he took his wife to live in Paris and got acquainted with Anderson, Hemingway and many other American writers.
The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, established his place in modern American literature as a spokesman for the Jazz Age and one of the representative writers of the Lost Generation in the 1920s.
After he became famous, Fitzgerald continued to work hard, but after marriage, his wife was ostentatious and then insane and extravagant, causing him great pain. He couldn't make ends meet financially, and at one point went to Hollywood to make a living writing screenplays.
Unfortunately, in 1936, he contracted lung disease and his wife fell ill, which made him almost unable to write. He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on December 21, 1940, at the age of 44.
Not only did Fitzgerald write long novels, but also short stories. In addition to these two works, his main works are Tender Is the Night (1934) and the Last Tycoon (1941).
His novels vividly reflect the destruction of the "American dream" in the 1920s and show the spiritual outlook of the "wasteland era" of the American upper class during the Great Depression.
Ⅱ. Background
The 1920s was a short and special period in American history, known as the "Hustle years," referring to the decade of 1929, after the end of World War I, and before the Great American economic collapse.
The amount of wealth was the criterion to judge whether a person was successful or not. People began to make money blindly, making "fast" money and making more money. Chasing getting rich, getting richer...
Spiritually, American hedonism, Spencer's theory of evolution and James's philosophy of pragmatism are prevailing in the United States. Traditional puritanical moral concepts and religious beliefs, such as "diligence and thrift", are gradually replaced by the pursuit of personal wealth, material life and other consumption hedonism.
Several factors constitute the particularity of this era.
Firstly, the United States is at the historic crossroads of the old and the new, where the capitalist boom has rapidly transformed the country from an agricultural civilization into an industrialized modern society.
At the same time, the United States entered the war at the end of The first World War and became a creditor country instead of a debtor because it was not seriously damaged by the war.
At home, the government mainly implemented the "laissez-faire" economic policy, which advocated that the free market should be allowed to operate by itself. The less the government intervened in economic activities, the more efficient the economic operation would be, which created the miraculous Coolidge Boom.
As a result, the domestic economy was booming, transportation, mining, and construction were expanding rapidly, and the electronics and automobile industries were booming. Cars, electrical appliances, household machinery, processed food, and ready-made clothes were beginning to enter homes, bringing unprecedented comfort to many Americans.
Ⅲ. Main Content
Nick comes to New York from his hometown in the Midwest. Right next to his house is the luxurious residence of Gatsby, the hero of the book. Nick meets Gatsby, and that's how the story begins.
Nick is full of inquisitive interest in Gatsby, and he finds that Gatsby has a deep feeling.
Young Gatsby was not rich. He was a major officer and fell in love with a girl called Daisy, who was also very fond of him. But then the First World War broke out and Gatsby was transferred to Europe.
As if by chance but by necessity, Daisy broke up with him and married Tom, a rich man from a wealthy family. But material satisfaction could not fill Daisy's spiritual void.
Gatsby is in great pain. He believes that it is money that makes Daisy betray the chastity of heart, so he decides to become a rich man.
After several years, Gatsby finally succeeded and built a mansion opposite Daisy's house. He spends a lot of money and plays his music all night, hoping to attract Daisy's attention to recover his lost love.
However, Daisy views their affair only as a stimulus.
Once, in a state of agitation, Daisy drove over and killed her husband's mistress. To protect Daisy, Gatsby takes responsibility for the accident. But Daisy was no longer the naive Daisy. She causes her mistress's husband to shoot Gatsby under Tom's provocation. Gatsby ended up a total victim, while Daisy didn't even go to his funeral.
Ⅳ. Characters Introduction
Nick
Nick is a member of the upper class, but his values are traditional. But in reality, Nick lives in a time and a class that rejects the traditional notions of selfishness and the supremacy of pleasure.
Nick is a constant reminder of where he wants to go, but he can't help drifting.
In the works, Nick is not only a participant in the story, but also an observer and narrator of the story.
Gatsby
During World War I he was a young officer who fell in love with Daisy, a lovely girl, but later separated from her.
After the war, he made his fortune as an illegal liquor dealer and threw lavish parties to attract the girl he loved.
He was sincere, pure and kind in his dealings with others. But he died in the end because of his faithful but unrequited love.
Daisy
She is a naive and lovely girl, but infatuated with the luxurious life, lost in the worship of money in the 20th century.
She regarded Gatsby's love for her as a kind of capital and pleasure and selfishly caused his death in the end.
Ⅴ. Theme
The American Dream has been the ideal and pursuit of the American nation since its inception. But Gatsby's death foreshadowed the disillusionment of the American dream in the 1920s.
If a dream, there is only the pursuit of material and the desire to become a "big man", but lack of why have what should survive after wealth and have such problem with human ultimate meaning of thinking, such a dream, after all, is a mirage, also must be short-sighted and not composing the dream.
It's a warning for American people in the 20th: What is the American dream? And what does the American Dream consist of?
This is probably a fundamental question about the meaning of human existence, including that the dream of material pursuit is a dream with no future, a dream that will eventually be disillusioned.
No society can only rely on a high level of material life to maintain the meaning and interest of people's life for a long time. What people want to live is the spiritual life, and only the spiritual life is the space for infinite and rich development.
Ⅵ. Artistic Features
Third-perspective
In the Great Gatsby, author Fitzgerald chose Nick as the narrator, telling the story of love between Gatsby and Daisy tirelessly with the identity and tone of "only the pursued and pursued, the busy and the bored".
Synecdoche
Gatsby in the framework of narratology is a great narrative of the American past, which seems to be an elegiac narration of Gatsby's and Daisy's personal story, but in fact is an anxious narration of a grand history of America.
Symbolism
Gatsby is a symbol of the American dream in the 1920s with its rampant opportunism and hedonism. His death presages the shattering of the distorted American dream at this period of time.
Metaphor
This is often a source of laughter in the fiction. For instance, “At once his figure blended with the concrete of the walls” vividly depicts Wilson's dusty, lifeless walk to the office.
Personification
Personification is used a lot in the fiction. “Every light left her as reluctantly as children leave a pleasant street at dusk” depicts the light of the setting sun left Miss Baker, which creates a lovely and pleasant atmosphere.
Imagines
The images are varied and colorful, which echoes the luxury of the 1920s in America. It shows the emptiness, decadence and filth of the twenties.
Ⅶ. Influence
The Great Gatsby is his best novel, which captures the themes of contemporary social life keenly and symbolically reveals the irony and sadness under the legend of the American Dream.
——Oxford Dictionary of American Literature
"The Great Gatsby" was the first step in American fiction since Henry James, because Fitzgerald wrote about the grandeur, hustle, giddiness and frivolity that were all the rage.
——Eliot
By the time Fitzgerald was at the height of his creative power, he had turned his knowledge of society into words (he was both its critic and its victim) and produced at least one work: The Great Gatsby.
——E.L. Doctorow
Ⅷ. Personal Reflection
Through this book, we can see how a lonely man constantly decorates his dream and fights with reality, and hears the sound of broken dreams.
Why broken? Because money can not be the destination of a dream.
No society can only rely on a high level of material life to maintain the meaning and interest of people's life for a long time. What people want to live is the spiritual life, and only the spiritual life is the space for infinite and rich development. This is probably a fundamental question about the meaning of human existence, including that the dream of material pursuit is a dream with no future and will eventually be shattered and disillusioned.
In today's society, we should take this as an example. A sound ideal should contain a harmonious and rich spiritual world. And we are to enrich our spiritual world, don not only satisfied with material conditions.