ON THE MALE CHARACTERS IN THE GREAT GATSBY从《了不起的盖茨比》中的男性形象看美国梦的破灭.docx

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1、ON THE MALE CHARACTERS IN THE GREAT GATSBY从了不起的盖茨比中的男性形象看美国梦的破灭ContentsAbstract3摘要31. Introduction42. Male Characters American Dreams62.1. The Tragic Hero Gatsby62.2. The Dramatic Narrator Nick72.3. The Ugly Upper-class Tom83. Fitzgeralds American Dream 9 3.1. Fitzgeralds Pursuit for Love and Wealth

2、103.2 Fitzgeralds Ration in the “Jazz Age” 113.3 Fitzgeralds Sense of Failure 134. The Relationship between the Male Characters and Fitzgerald 154.1. Gatsby and Fitzgerald164.2. Nick and Fitzgerald174.3. Tom and Fitzgerald185. Conclusion 20 Bibliography21AbstractThe Great Gatsby is one of the greate

3、st novels in Modern American literature. It is a highly symbolic meditation on the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. On the one hand, Fitzgerald shows a running theme of how the American Dream affects all of the characters in The Great Ga

4、tsby, especially the major male characters, Gatsby, Nick and Tom. He also uses the distinctive writing style to introduce the three major male characters. On the other hand, according to Fitzgeralds personality and experience, the three male characters are generally considered being written autobiog

5、raphically reflecting the different sides of the authors characters, which attracts readers to some extent.Key words: American Dream, Daisy Buchanan, Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby摘 要了不起的盖茨比是美国现代文学史上最优秀的作品之一。它反思了一个空前繁荣、物质过剩时代的美国梦的破灭，展现了美国梦对人们日常生活的消极影响，尤其是对男性人物（盖茨比、尼克、汤姆）的影响上。尽管他们对自己的生活都充满了雄伟的抱负，但变质了的美

6、国梦却粉碎了他们的梦想。此外，菲茨杰拉德还运用独特的手法描述了这三个特殊的男性人物；通过对这三个人物与菲茨杰拉德的对照可以看出：作者从某种程度上说是在讲述自己的经历，盖茨比、尼克、汤姆实际上是作家个性特点三个不同侧面的反映，这也是小说之所以成功的魅力所在。关键词: 美国梦；黛西布坎南；菲茨杰拉德；了不起的盖茨比ON THE MALE CHARACTERSIN THE GREAT GATSBY1. Introduction Reading Fitzgeralds works, we can remind of many literary values from them. People usua

7、lly show more interests on Fitzgeralds masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. Some articles about The Great Gatsby have been published, such as American Dream and Character Symbolization in the Novel The Great Gatsby Chen Mei, Jin Yue. Journal of Qiqihar University (Phi & Soc Sci), September. 2003.,On Nick

8、Carraways Dual Roles in The Great Gatsby Du Yong-xin. Joural of Sichuan International Studies University, Jan . , 2001.,Gatsby: Another Fitzgerald Xie Jiashum. Joural of Tangshang Polytechnic College, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2000.,etc. These arguements are both odds and ends, not integrated. So, the aim of

9、this article is to perfectly introduce the three male characters (Gatsby, Nick and Tom). And as we have known, only having enough understanding of the author and his personal life, the article can be drawed clearly.Although at that time, Mark Twain and William Dean Howells thought that America would

10、 become the hope of the whole world, F. Scott Fitzgerald gradually found that that so-called new world was totally a disaster. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived in the midst of the “roaring twenties” and was part of it all-driving fast cars, drinking hard whisky, and showing an immense delight in those

11、, was perceptive enough to recognize that America was “a moon that never roses.” And as much as he enjoyed the “roaring” of the post-war boom years, he also foresaw its doom and failure. Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul. In his younger age,he attended a private school in New Je

12、rsey, then he went to Princeton University. Academic difficulties forced him out of Princeton midway through his junior year; he returned the following fall but he left his college permanently in 1917 and decided to join the army, as World War I neared its end. While stationed in Montgomery, Alabama

13、, he met and immediately 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. And with the publication of This Side of Paradise

14、in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him. In 1922 he published his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned and a collection of short stories, Tales of the Jazz Age. In 1925 Fitzgerald managed to complete his masterpiece: The Great G

15、atsby. His next novel, Tender Is the Night (1934) was received coldly mainly because America was deep in the Great Depression and nobody wanted to read about expatriates in France. Battered by the failure of the book and Zeldas mental breakdowns, he drank to excess and grew seriously ill, died in 19

16、40.Fitzgerald is a famous American modern writer and is called “spokesman in the Jazz Age”. And his greatness lies in the fact that he found intuitively in his personal experience the embodiment of the nation and created a myth out of American life. The story of The Great Gatsby is a good illustrati

17、on. T. S. Eliot read The Great Gatsby three times and concluded that it was “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James.” T. S. Eliot. Letter to Scott Fitzgerald . New York: New York Press, 1925.The main theme of The Great Gatsby meditates on 1920s American as a whole, in parti

18、cular the break up of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material . Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social trends. The Great Gatsby shows a running theme of how the American dream affects all of the characters: they each have thei

19、r own aspiration for their own life, but, ironically, their aspiration is only revolved around wealth, and the core of their life is to enjoy happiness from money. And, Daisy, the only heroine, who relates with the other characters, has a perfect vantage point in the story- she is Gatsbys lover, Nic

20、ks cousin, Toms wife, and all three are closely linked because of her. Besides, The Great Gatsby is also an autobiographical novel. Fitzgerald combines his experience with the male characters, such as Gatsby, Nick and Tom showing his own experience, life and dream.2. The Male Characters American Dre

21、amThe Great Gatsby is a novel that illustrates the society in the 1920s and the associated beliefs, values and dreams of the American people at that time. These beliefs, values and dreams can be summed up be what is termed the “American Dream”: a dream of money, wealth, prosperity and the happiness

22、that supposedly came with the booming economy and get-rich-quick schemes that formed the essential underworld of American upper-class society. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates the American Dream and the “foul dust” or the carelessness of a society that floats in the wake of this dream. According to the

23、characters respective expectation, it can be seen that the American Dream is not confined to one social class or type of person, but to the whole nation, everyone.2.1. The Tragic Hero GatsbyIn the novel, Gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything on his dream,

24、not realizing that his dream is unworthy of him. To Gatsby, his dream is of spiritual reunion with Daisy, but his prior dream is wealth. He thinks that wealth can solve all his problems: time, Daisy, and love. “Cant repeat the past? he cried incredulously. Why of course you can!Im going to fix every

25、thing just the way it was before, he said , nodding determinedly. Shell see.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 148) In the novel, Gatsby uses the most lavish party, sumptuous mansion, and gorgeous machine to impress Daisy. And the green light, situated at the end of Daisys East Egg dock, represents Gatsbys hopes a

26、nd dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy. “If it wasnt for the mist we could see your home across the bay, said Gatsby. You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said.

27、 Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light o

28、n a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 125)In fact, the green light stands for the achievements achieved by Gatsby to some extent. It leads Gatsby to go after the future, the glorious phantasm in his ideal world, not only the love for Daisy. However, Gatsb

29、y dream is bound to fail. On the one hand, he acquires immense wealth through criminal activities, for instance, bootlegging. “He and this Wolfsheim go and sold grain alcohol over the counter. ” (Fitzgerald 2004: 179) This is the opposite idea of the American Dream, which states that only the good,

30、virtuous and hard working are rewarded. On the other hand, he held an unrealistic view of life and how he could recreate the past. His dreams has distorted in the reality, when his rationality realizes that the image of life and of Daisy does not coincide with the real life version. The devastating

31、end of his dream is the finish of The Great Gatsby. Just as Fitzgerald sees the American dream crumbling in the 1920s, American powerful optimism, vitality, and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth.2.2. The Dramatic Narrator NickNick Carraway is a pragmatic man, who come

32、s from the Middle West. He has distinctive temperament and value standard. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world havent had the advantages that youve had.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 1) He is also a sober, intellect and reflective one and mak

33、es the objective judgment and evaluation to the major characters. His final choice reflects the authors moral orientation. In The Great Gatsby, he does not share the American dream. But still he is striving for something, and he wants to be himself, as he sees himself, tolerant, objective and reliab

34、le. The money of the upper class is just a tiny bit of his dream together with his admiration for the rich East Eggers. Mainly, his dream consists of mental values, of a pursuit of honesty. He praise highly of himself: “I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 80)

35、. “Thats my Middle West the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty darkI see now that this has a story of the West, after all Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly un adaptable to Eastern life.” (Fitz

36、gerald 2004: 235)The above sentences show that Nick realizes for the first time that though his story is set on the East Coast, the western character of his acquaintances (“some deficiency in common”) is the source of the storys tensions and attitudes. He considers each characters behavior and value

37、 choices as a reaction to the wealth-obsessed culture of New York. This perspective contributes powerfully to Nicks decision to leave the East Coast and return to Middle West in search of a less morally ambiguous environment. Though he gives up the opportunity to become rich, he scrupulously abides

38、by his moral criterion.2.3. The Ugly Upper-class TomWhilst Toms interpretation of the American dream does involve money, it is not his prime concern as it is with many of the other characters. His dream also concentrates on power gained through the prestige that is associated with property. “His fam

39、ily were enormously wealthbut now hed left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away; for instance, hed brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest” (Fitzgerald 2004: 8) His self-confidence and utter belief in his superiority are an example of how he thinks about

40、 himself in relation to all other people, especially to the low-class man, Wilson. He uses his social status and physical strength to dominate those around him. For example, he subtly taunts Wilson while having an affair with his wife, experiences on guilt for his immoral behavior, and does not hesi

41、tate to lash out violently in order to preserve his authority over Myrtle in Chapter 2. He is so desperately an empty man that he consider himself as exterior belongings. He is trying to find his identity by looking for happiness in nice cars (it is a ridiculous yellow luxury vehicle), money and a g

42、ood woman.Toms dream of power and superiority leads to his moral decline by ruining his marriage with Daisy and ultimately her wishes of having a truly happy marriage. Not only does his lack of morals affect Daisy and her happiness, it also fosters the situation of Gatsbys and Georges death. “I told

43、 him the truth, he said. He came to the door while we were getting ready to leave, He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadnt told him who owned the car. He broke off defiantly. What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisys, but he w

44、as a tough one. .” (Fitzgerald 2004: 239)Tom is the ultimate example of how the effect of the American dream caused the society to change their morals and exhibit action that is detrimental to society in general.3. Fitzgeralds American Dream “American Dream” is the most common but important concept

45、in America, related to the early history of this country. But time has endowed the conception with dramatically different meaning. Originally, people in America upheld a thought of American Dream to strive for a peaceful and abundant country which can offer its people the basic needs of life, nevert

46、heless, thats not the case in 1920s. First thirty years of 19th century witnessed a significant and dramatic change in Western world, impacting on the whole society, bringing people with pain, alienation and puzzles. Meanwhile, a newly emerged musical form derived from the slave songs and their spir

47、ituals. Due to the widely spreading and appeal, the 1920s was also called the Jazz Age. No longer representing a traditional merit of their ancestors hardness and diligence, the American Dream then was deformed into greedy for money because of the World War and Great Depression, depriving common peo

48、ple of their sense of security and beliefs. Influenced by such a fast changing world, Americans were more practical and material than ever. The old American Dream had long gone and Fitzgerald was one of the victims. It was during this period Fitzgerald experienced his pattern of life: from a beautif

49、ul dream to the cruel disenchantment and finally to a state of thorough failure as well as despair.3.1. Fitzgeralds Pursuit for Love and WealthSimilar to Gatsby in the book, Fitzgerald had been enlisted to the army during the World War One, during which one of the most major events was his meeting with a beautiful s