索菲亚英文-后座议员
四川师范大学文理学院本科毕业论文
An
Analysis of Disillusionment of American
Dream
in The Great Gatsby
论《了不起的盖茨比》中美国梦的破灭
学生姓名 张 燕
院系名称 外国语学院
专业名称
英语(师范)
班 级 2008级 1班
学 号 2
指导教师 陈雪瑶(讲师)
答辩时间 2012-4-15
论《了不起的盖茨比》中美国梦的破灭
学生:张燕 指导教师:陈雪瑶 讲师
摘要:美国著名作家菲兹杰拉德被称为“美国梦的代言人”,在他的小说中,我们难以区
分是他的生活
如一部小说还是他的小说就是他的一段真实的生活的写照,因为他已完全
融入其中。尤其是《了不起的盖
茨比》,文中主人公盖茨比是为追求美国梦而最终牺牲
了自己的典例,他渴望以自己的信念和勇气来获取
物质以及爱情上的收获,然而由于他
的梦想是一种对虚幻的渴望而不是建立在现实的基础之上的追求,最
终导致了他美国梦
的破灭,文中通过时间发展及不同人物个性特征向我们阐述了这一梦想破灭的各种原<
br>因。
关键词:美国梦;破灭;原因
An Analysis
of Disillusionment of American Dream in
The
Great Gatsby
Abstract:F. Scott
Fitzgerald, is widely considered as the literary
spokesman of the
“American Dream”. His novels
include many aspects of his unique experiences in
that period
of time. It is not easy to
distinguish his novel and the real life, which has
already involved him
physically and mentally
in it. Especially in his masterpiece, The Great
Gatsby, which was
published in 1925. In the
novel, the hero revealed a typical example of
those who were eager
to pursue the American
Dream but finally ended by sacrificing themselves.
Though he
dreamed of achieving material wealth
and love through his courage and hard working, all
the
factors from outside world and the
indelibility of his dream led to the
disillusionment of it.
Through the development
of the story and characteristics of heroes,
Fitzgerald elaborated a
vivid picture of the
disillusionment of American Dream.
Key
words: American dream; disillusionment; reason
Contents
Introduction .................................
..................................................
...................... 1
Part I The
Introduction of rald .............................
...................... 2
1.1The Life
Expericence of Fitzgerald ........................
.................................... 2
1.1.1
Fitzgerald’s Background ..........................
........................................ 2
1.1.2 Fitzgerald’s Marriage ..................
..................................................
... 2
1.2 Literary Works of Fitzgerald .......
..................................................
............ 3
PartII American Dream and its D
isillusionment....................................
.......... 4
2.1 The American Dream ..........
..................................................
.................... 4
2.1.1 The Definition of
American Dream
.................................................
4
2.1.2 The Essence of American Dream ........
............................................. 5
2.2 Disillusionment of American Dream
Reflected in the Novel ................... 5
2.2.1 Gatsby’s American Dream ................
............................................... 5
2.2.2 Nick Carraway’s American Dream
..................................................
7
2.2.3 Tom, Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker’s
American Dream .......... 7
Part III The Cause
of Disillusionment of American Dream
............................ 9
3.1 The Jazz
Age and the Roaring Twenties .....................
.............................. 9
3.2 Social
Environment and People factors ...................
................................. 9
Conclusion
..................................................
..................................................
...... 11
Bibliography .......................
..................................................
.............................. 12
Introduction
F. Scott
Fitzgerald was born in a not rich family, so he
wanted to earn lots of money to
become rich to
enjoy high quality life. The tempo of his life
slackened as his life was
shredded by Zelda’s
insanity and his own self-destructive alcoholism.
Through years of
emotional and physical
collapse he struggled to repair his life by
writing for
Hollywood-producing at the same
time a series of stories that exposed his
humiliation there.
He became one of the
greatest writers in American literature and wrote
many works in his
lifetime to manifest the
life reality of that time. He was a spokesman for
the so-called Jazz
Age.
The Great Gatsby
is regarded as his masterpiece. First published on
April 10, 1925, the
story is set in Long
Island's North Shore and New York City during the
summer of 1922. The
novel tells of Gatsby, an
idealist, who tries to recapture his lost love but
in vain and is finally
destroyed by the
influence of the wealthy people around him .The
story deals with the failure
of the American
dream as personified in the rich and beautiful
woman Daisy who belongs to
corrupt society.
The Great Gatsby evokes a haunting mood of a
glamorous, wild time that
seemingly will never
come again. It is about the loss of an ideal and
the disillusionment that
comes with the
failure is embodied fully in the personal tragedy
of a young man (Gatsby)
whose “incorruptible
dream” is “smashed into pieces by the relentless
reality” (Fitzgerald, 8).
Gatsby’s failure to
realize his ideal symbolizes the disillusionment
of his American
Dream. Also, Gatsby’s
intensity of dream represents a state of
commitment which takes him
in search of his
personal grail; Gatsby’s failure magnifies to a
great extent the end of the
American Dream.
1
Part I The
Introduction of rald
1.1The Life
Expericence of Fitzgerald
Francis Scott
Key Fitzgerald is one of the most outstanding
American authors in the
twenties, and The
Great Gatsby is his best work.
1.1.1
Fitzgerald’s Background
F. Scott
Fitzgerald was born in 1896 into a St, Paul
middle-class family. After an
unsuccessful
undergraduate career at Princeton, he entered the
Army as a second Lieutenant
and while in
training camp he met the beautiful girl who was to
become his wife. He married
Zelda Sayre as his
literary career got off to a meteoric start in
1920. Through the 1920s when
money seemed
plentiful and postwar morality encouraged a
reckless pursuit of happiness, he
and Zelda
traveled in Europe and New York, acting out the
glamorous life-style he wrote of
in his most
popular magazine fiction. He was a spokesman for
the so-called Jazz Age, setting
a personal as
well as literary example for a generation whose
first commandment was: Do
what you will. The
speed of his life slackened as his life was
shredded by Zelda’s insanity
and his own self-
destructive alcoholism. He fell from favor as a
writer when the indulgent
decade of his
triumph went down under the impact of a worldwide
Depression in the 1930s.
1.1.2
Fitzgerald’s Marriage
It is absolutely
the tough teenage years and marriage life that
made Fitzgerald experience
the difficulties
and frustrations of the life. So we should
discover some reflections of the story
from
the author’s life.
2
The
relationship between Fitzgerald and Zelda went so
dramatic that even himself once
said, “
Sometimes I don’t know whether Zelda and I are
real or whether we are characters in
one of my
novels”( Fitzgerald, 1).
Zelda was the
daughter of a judge in Montgomery, Alabama, a
beautiful society girl.
Though she told
Fitzgerald that she loved him so much, but her too
expensive life left him
unable to support her.
They have experienced breaking up but finally got
engaged again with
the support of Fitzgerald’s
success. It was also at this time that Fitzgerald
wrote many of his
short stories which helped
to pay for their extravagant lifestyle. But when
the misfortune
came, in 1930s when Zelda
became increasingly troubled by mental illness.
Their life became
harder. It was his marriage
and his onerous life of making money to support
her that affected
his writing tremendously.
Fitzgerald was tormented virtually all his life by
the fact that he
could not concentrate on his
working and the improvement of his art in general.
1.2 Literary Works of Fitzgerald
The Roaring Twenties was a period of literary
creativity, and works of several notable
authors appeared during the period. Such as
Earnest Hemingway, Erich Maria Remarque and
F.
Scott Fitzgerald, Etc. Literary works in that
period of time mirror people’s experiences and
attitude of the1920s. We could see it from the
following examples: All Quiet on the Western
Front by Erich Maria Remarque recounts the
horrors of WWI and also the deep detachment
from German civilian life felt by many men
returning from the front.
This Side of
Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays the lives
and morality of
post-World War I youth. The
Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway is about a
group of
expatriate Americans in Europe during
the 1920s. All in all writers and their works in
those
years were haunted with complicated
sensations which have shown us all the
difficulties and
frustrations in their life.
3
PartⅡ American Dream and its
Disillusionment
2.1 The American Dream
Before we take a look to the causes and
effects of the disillusionment of American dream,
let’s first try to understand the definition
and content of American Dream.
2.1.1 The
Definition of American Dream
In different
social and historical backgrounds, the concepts of
American Dream are
different, and for
different people, they have different
understandings of American Dream and
the ways
to pursue their American Dream are also various.
The definition of the so-called
American Dream
can be distinguished in broad sense and narrow
sense. For the former,
American Dream is the
equality, freedom and democracy in the land of the
United States.
The later one means, everyone
in America ,if only work hard and never give up,
he could
achieve his dream and could live a
better life in this piece of land, that is to say,
people
should make their efforts ,such as
diligence, courage and determination to realize
dreams
rather than depend on the help from
others.
This term that American Dream was
first used by James Truslow Adams in his book The
Epic of America which was written in 1931. He
states, “The American Dream is that dream of
a
land in which life should be better and richer and
fuller for everyone, with opportunity for
each
according to ability or achievement. It is a
difficult dream for the European upper classes
to interpret adequately, and too many of us
have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not
a
dream of motor cars and high wages merely,
but a dream of social order in which each man
and each woman shall be able to attain to the
fullest stature of which they are innately
capable,
and be recognized by others for what
they are, regardless of the fortuitous
circumstances of
birth or position.” This
ideology is based itself on the principle that one
should be responsible
for oneself, and taking
every opportunity to gain success by courage and
hard working.
4
2.1.2 The
Essence of American Dream
As for the
American Dream, it is a belief that a better life
could be achieved through hard
work and
strives. There are several elements lie in the
American Dream: the US has provided
equal
opportunities for everyone; the success based on
own talents and efforts, not the
background
and extraction; everyone was born equally; and
everyone has his own right to
achieve success.
“For any American no matter what his origin
was, could succeed in changing their social
positions and making their dreams come true
through their own efforts, and getting new, free
and better life.”(Zhao Hongwei, 2)This is the
basic often of
that the American way of life
offers the equal possibility of unlimited
economic, social, etc.
One can always work
their way up from the rags to riches just like
Abraham Lincoln, 16th
President of the US.
In brief, the main content of American
culture was emphasis on individuals' value,
optimistic, pursuing of democracy and freedom,
the promotion of deportation and competition
and the need of realism and practicality.
There was a common truth that everyone who lived
in that period actually had an American Dream
and eager to achieve it and everyone has an
American Dream which is to have a good
opportunity to realize personal dream.
2.2 Disillusionment of American Dream
Reflected in the Novel
In this novel, we
could discover so many characteristics of the
disillusionment of
American dream. All of them
have been reflected from the words and actions of
heroes and
heroines
2.2.1
Gatsby’s American Dream
As for the great
Gatsby, his American Dream is to have much money
and then win Daisy,
who is in love with Gatsby
five years ago but now is the wife of rich Tom.
Gatsby thinks that
only if he has much money,
at least has more money than Tom, should he win
Daisy’s love.
So it is reasonable for him to
pursue material wealth in order to win the love of
Daisy.
5
Gatsby’s attempt to
achieve his American Dream which is to recapture
the love of Daisy
Buchanan whom he had known
five years before the action of the novel begins,
when he is a
young and poor officer in the
United States army and Daisy is a young unmarried
woman,
who used to live a luxuriant life with
much money and great fame. And the only way should
Gatsby make his American Dream come true is to
get a lot of money which is much difficulty
for a normal soldier to earn. He does all the
things Daisy asks him to do. And nobody can do
this out of reason. In order to win Daisy,
Gatsby dare to have illegal trade of alcohol to
make
a fortune, because he clearly knows that
he must offer Daisy a better life which is
luxuriant if
he wants to win Daisy. Through
his great effort, he gets much money authentically
although it
is from illegal business.
Gatsby's success in fortune is great, his strong
will of love and achieving life goal is also
great; he becomes the big name of the society,
and becomes the upper class's deputy.
Everyone
is glad to come to his party, everyone admires his
property, and everyone wants to
be his friend,
even Daisy has taken much notice of him and falls
in love with him again.
Gatsby is also great
when he loses his life in order to protect Daisy
from the accident.
However, “the falling
of his American Dream, that Daisy goes together
with her husband
to another city happily while
Gatsby is murdered mistakenly, improves that all
his great
characterize means nothing. In other
words, Gatsby’s final American Dream, which is to
win
Daisy, is totally a failure.”(杨慧群, 3)
Furthermore, when Gatsby died, no one turns up for
his funeral, though hundreds of
people have
eaten at his place. It is a sad comment on human
nature that when a man dies, he
is alone,
absolutely alone. The only things that accompany
him are his good deeds especially
those done
spontaneously and without expectations. And the
saddest thing is that Daisy,
doesn’t feel any
regret or sorrow for Gatsby’s death, has gone
traveling with his husband Tom.
There is
nothing left for Gatsby. All the things of his
life have gone with his death, including
his
wealth and love. From the above analysis of
Gatsby’s American Dream, there is a
conclusion
that whatever it is broken or not, Gatsby’s
American Dream is to get as much
money as he
can even through every illegal means, and then he
can have the economical
strength to achieve
his final goal——win the love of Daisy.
Gatsby spends his whole life in attaining money
and status so that he can reach a certain
position in life and then he can win Daisy
back. That is what motivates him to move to West
Egg, and makes money by any means necessary,
holds extravagant parties in every weekend,
does everything what Daisy requires him to do
and so on. There is a position in life that he
yearns for and will do all that it takes to
achieve it, and the final goal for his American
Dream
is to get Daisy’s love. It is doomed to
be a failure if Gatsby wants to be in love with
Daisy,
6
and live with her forever.
2.2.2 Nick Carraway’s American Dream
In this novel, we see disorientation in
achieving the American Dream in Gatsby, while in
Nick Carraway, the narrator, we see a far more
rational mind in dealing with this. Nick
Carraway was made in the book the
representative of the traditional moral codes of
America.
He comes from the Midwest and wants
to make money in the Long Island. For he is also
attracted by the beauty, the wealth, and the
sophistication of “the wasteland”, so at any rate,
he is another dream seeker. However as
witnessing Gatsby’s tragedy, he realizes what has
gone wrong with American dream from the
beginning to the end. Thanks to the traditional
moral conducts that rooted in him and his
following his father’s advice on toleration, he
never
get lost. Finally, he got the essential
emptiness of American dream and achieves the
penetration of Tom and Daisy’s corruption,
grossness, and cowardice. Nick does not make
quick judgment, and thus is able to gain
access to “many curious natures” The world of
Gatsby is inhabited in main by three groups of
people and Nick has contact with them all. So
the function of Nick in this book can never be
ignored. He is there to make the readers
understand the roles in this book from an
objective point of view and then get better
comprehension of Gatsby’s idealized love and
the reality of the society. Both Nick and
Gatsby in this novel emerge as moral symbol:
Gatsby as the embodiment of spiritual
desolation or waste, Nick as a hope for moral
and spiritual growth.
2.2.3 Tom,
Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker’s American Dream
In this book, Tom, Daisy Buchanan and
Jordan Baker represent the corruption of
American dream. Comparing with Gatsby, they
were born with wealth and status but devoid
of
purpose. Daisy’s lament is especially indicative
of this: “What will we do with ourselves
this
afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and the day after that,
and the next thirty years?”(Fitzgerald, 1).
Daisy Buchanan, is the dream and cause of his
wasted dream. As a representative of
those
women who are not expected to be well educated, to
work, and have developed a kind
of parasitic
dependency. Daisy is, however, physically
attractive, romantic, and sentimental,
7
but emotionally frigid, having a
destructive influence on the man with whom she is
associated.
All her charm is just a gesture of
life rather than a quality of living.
Tom
Buchanan, the husband of Daisy, is ruler and
representative of the moral wasteland
that has
replaced American idealism. All his bulky gestures
tell us that in the moral wasteland,
idealism
is a source of weakness rather than strength; he
devoted to nothing but the impulse of
his own
flesh and the demands of his own ego, completely
regardless of any concept of either
a moral
code or a personal loyalty.
For Tom and
Daisy Buchanan, it is nothing worries about any
potential crisis around
them, for they have no
moral responsibility at all. Whenever what
happens, they will shield
themselves with
their upper class social status and retreat into
their money or leave other
people to clean up
the mess they’ve made.
Jordan Baker, at any
rate, is no less a creature of the moral wasteland
than is Daisy or
Tom Buchanan. As a “lovely”
girl who dresses in “white” and always seem to be
“cool” and
apathetic, Jordan Baker is an
opportunist in her own way. Being a 23-year-old
women’s golf
champion becomes involved with
Nick during the course of the summer of 1922. She
looks
like “incurably dishonest” however,
though Nick finds Jordan haughty and careless, he
finds
himself being attracted by her anyway.
On the other sides, Jordan once “loved” Nick, for
she
had sensed the honesty and moral firmness
in Nick’s heart, and realized that only when
staying with a man like Nike can she be free
from the mess and continues to be on her own
way. But in the end Jordan gets engaged to
another man after not seeing Nick for a short
time,
leaving Nick angry and letting him
realizes the same irresponsible exploitation in
Jordan as
that he sees in Tom and Daisy.
Jordan’s action seems to intentionally echo
Daisy’s leaving
Gatsby to marry Tom five years
ago.
8
Part III The Cause
of Disillusionment of American Dream
3.1
The Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties
The
spirit of the Roaring Twenties was marked by a
general feeling of discontinuity
associated
with modernity, a break with traditions.
Everything seemed to be feasible through
modern technology. New technologies,
especially automobiles, moving pictures and radio
proliferated modernity to a large part of the
population. Formal decorative frills were shed in
favor of practicality in both daily life and
architecture. At the same time, jazz and dancing
rose in popularity, in opposition to the mood
of the specter of World War I. As such, the
period is also often referred to as the Jazz
Age. The Jazz Age, was, in the words of Malcolm
Cowley, “not so much a historical period as a
legend of glitter, of recklessness, and of talent
in
such profusion that it was sown broadcast
like wild oats.” It was a legend of “American
adolescence before pain set in.” Fitzgerald
became “the angel of the twenties” and his
writings those of a man inside that legendary
period.
3.2 Social Environment and
People factors
Another reason for the
disillusionment of Gatsby’s American dream may be
people
factors. Gatsby’s love for Daisy was to
the point of obsession, it was really touching,
but he
chose the wrong object to pay for their
own love, Daisy was a secular, hedonistic money
worshiper. She could never work hand in hand
with Gatsby. And she would not pay a high
price for the ideal, and make enormous
sacrifices. Her life was of no true love, but
cannot be
without money. Gatsby’s tragedy is
that he has not been able to understand Daisy’s
motives,
can not understand that she belonged
to the complexity of the world. He only saw the
world’s
surface, bright and elegant, but did
not see it hidden in the cold and heartless. In
order to
protect their rights and status,
people in this world has taken hypocritical means.
In short, he loved the wrong person and did
not wake up until he died. What always
existed
between him and Daisy was an unbridgeable gap
between social status. He’s life was
9
such a tragedy which rooted in his
blind pursuit of life and love and fantasy, as
well as the
lack of knowledge about the upper
middle class society, where all the lofty spirit
are gone. He
started from scratch, but society
was swallowed by the dark coldness. He would not
take in
any case struggle to Daisy and will
not become part of high society forever.
Gatsby’s failure, to some extent, has
indicated the failure of the American Dream, his
struggle is the embodiment of American spirit,
the failure of him is the declaration of
recession in the American spirit. His tragedy
arose because he built his ideal on the illusion
than reality, his desires to succeed, but when
he realized the dream of money he fell into the
spirit of the post-crisis. He preferred to
escape in stead of facing it bravely. The
competition
between Tom and Gatsby was not
only a battle between rivals in love, but also a
battle
between representatives of the two
different social classes. So his failure is
inevitable. The
former lovers, Nick and
Jordan, were the spectators of the whole story,
they have witnessed
this dirty and evil
history. The height of material prosperity has
brought desolation and
twisted soul, which
hidden under the appearance of carnival fun. The
whole community is
suffering from this mental
illness --- a no way out of the loss and
suffering. Therefore, the
disillusionment of
American dream has become a necessity.
10
Conclusion
After collecting
information and completing this essay, we can
understand better the
appearance, development
and disillusionment of Gatsby’s love and dream.
Now we can not
only feel empathetic about
Gatsby’s intricate and pessimistic life, but also
see the inhumanity
and cruelty of society.
Through this novel, Fitzgerald shows the
collapse and disillusionment of people’s dream,
no matter what kind of concepts it has, money,
social status or simply of happiness. The most
catastrophic collapse, however, is the
American dream itself. Here, heroes and heroines
in this
book including Gatsby, Daisy, Tom,
Nick and Jordan together serve as metaphors by
Fitzgerald to reveal the paradox of American
dream: when materialism is elevated into having
spiritual values, it can only confuse its
disciples. He also pointed that, for the reality
of life
can not compare to idealistic dream,
as well as the ideals are usually far too perfect
to be
paralleled in reality. Then the collapse
of American dream is unavoidable.
However,
this novel is not only a criticism of the
corruption of money on American
dream. It is
also an appealing for abandoning materialism and
returning to traditional moral
values. What’s
more, Nick Carraway, the narrator, provides a
successful foil for the
degradation of the
American dream. He is the voice of morality and
humanity in this novel
and the only one who
register the human loss and measures the disparity
between Gatsby’s
unrealistic dream and the
reality upon which it was based.
All in all,
this novel, The Great Gatsby, can be absolutely
termed as the masterpiece of
Fitzgerald. From
it we can get some hidden information about the
author himself. Fitzgerald
said that sometimes
he doesn’t know whether he and his wife are real
or they are just
characters in his novel. This
novel, actually, ensured Fitzgerald’s position as
a serious and
talented writer. In more recent
years Tony Tanner claimed it to be “the most
perfectly crafted
work of fiction to have come
out of American.”
11
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