Lost in "American Dream&q
I have heard of the famous novel The Great Gatsby before while until recently have I got the time and mood to read it. Sincerely speaking, it is so attractive that it just cost me one week to finish it.
The Great Gatsby is written by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night, and his most famous, The Great Gatsby. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age. In the 1920s, America was in the jazz age. Most Americans have begun to get a sense of their material benefits which were caused by World War I. They thought they were placed in one of the most brilliant era in human history and also believed that the time will continue endlessly. The middle class expanded rapidly, personal consumption expanded, the fashion of life changed, and people's moral concept changed.
Therefore, the writers who are the representatives of “the Lost Generation” began to publish a large amount of works to express the present situation of the America society. In 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby to express his attitudes towards the America society and openly criticized the distorted American Dream. Fitzgerald wrote this novel in order to express the coxcombical ethos of that era was like Gatsby, and the American dream which seemed mysterious and great in people’s heart, was not real.
The novel describes the break of American dream of Gatsby who was an upstart by selling wine in the 1920s, which indicates the American society's tragedy. On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. But this novel actually aims at criticizing the current situation of society at that time. The novel opens in West Egg, Long Island, where Nick, the narrator, has rented a house next to the mansion of Gatsby, the mysterious host of regular, extravagant parties. All this was for Daisy. Gatsby and Daisy had loved each other five years ago, but he was penniless. Gatsby was then sent overseas by the army. Daisy had given up waiting for him and married Tom. After the War, Gatsby decided to win Daisy back by buying a house in West Egg and throwing lavish parties in the hopes that she would attend. But Daisy was not the Daisy she used to be. One day, Daisy ran over Tom's mistress and killed her. In order to protect Daisy, Gatsby had taken responsibility for the accident. But Daisy and Tom had schemed to make the mistress’ husband think that it was Gatsby who killed his wife. At last Gatsby became the victim of their conspiracy. Nick struggles to arrange Gatsby's funeral, finding that while Gatsby was well connected in life, very few people are willing to attend his funeral.
Let’s take a deep look on Gatsby. The protagonist Gatsby was born into a poor family, but he had the great ambition to achieve the fortune and ideal happiness. And his lover Daisy is the symbol of youth, money and rich, the "American dream" which is based on the consistent pursuing of wealth. But he was totally wrong, he looked up to this vulgar superficial woman who would not give up her unexamined but elegant stable life for the ideal romantic dream of Gatsby. He lived in the illusion, was abandoned by Daisy and the society, eventually became the irretrievable tragedy.
My analysis of the book are as follows.
First, when it comes to the writer’s writing style, The Great Gatsby reflects the breaking of "American dream" in the 1920s. It shows the upper social spirit of "wasteland" during the Great Depression. I feel the overall style is a dark, gloomy sadness after the bursting of the American dream.
Then as for the organizational method, we can easily find that the author is good at setting the suspense. The book tells the story by Nick’s tone. In the opening it does not directly appear Gatsby, the protagonist, but takes a set of suspense and foil, enabling the readers to have a great curiosity on the leading character. When Nick went to see Daisy and Tom for the first time, miss Baker asked him: "You should have known Gatsby." This question contains the default, that is, even if Nick does not know anybody, he should know Gatsby. This question is also reveals the status and prestige of Gatsby from the side. When Nick returned home, he found that a person walked out of the building's shadow, "as you can see he is Mr. Gates himself, coming out to make sure which piece of the sky belongs to him." Nick wanted to say hello to him, but "when I looked back at him, he was gone." Here the author once again rejects the Gatsby showing in front of the reader directly, which is the traditional writing, making the novel more attractive.
Secondly, the technique of foil is used for dozens of times. At a dinner party people talked about Gatsby, "some people have long regarded nothing is taboo thing in the world, but now talking about him, they whisper, that it is enough to prove that he has caused people how romantic daydream." The protagonist had not really shown up, while the author has used a lot of ground to foil his mysterious.
Thirdly, the author also uses the technique of montage. In the chapter 3 it describes the dinner party in Gatsby’s, "The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath--already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group and then excited with triumph glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light." This description uses montage, showing the impetuous and noisy dinner, seemingly surge of luxurious occasion is the social parties’ empty face and soul.
The technique of humor is the fourth. In the article the author uses multiple times of humorous style of writing, making the novel inadvertently easy When Nick went to Tom’s apartment he saw "The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock. Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room." While in the Gatsby’s house, "the Hornbeams and the Willie Voltaires and a whole clan named Blackbuck who always gathered in a corner and flipped up their noses like goats at whosoever came near. " The words is concise, but it vividly shows the group of the guest's pride and affectation.
Satire is the most important technique. As a spectator, Nick is also an important participants of the whole matter. When describing the dinner, he saw "the air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names." The author mocks these so-called "high society" guests who had no sincerity of fake and artificial at the party. This is some kind of guest? " People were not invited--they went there. They got into automobiles which bore them out to Long Island and somehow they ended up at Gatsby's door. Once there they were introduced by somebody who knew Gatsby and after that they conducted themselves according to the rules of behavior associated with amusement parks. Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all, came for the party with a simplicity of heart that was its own ticket of admission." When some of the guests asked the girl's name, "their last names were either the melodious names of flowers and months or the sterner ones of the great American capitalists whose cousins, if pressed, they would confess themselves to be." Nick also noted that "I was immediately struck by the number of young Englishmen dotted about; all well dressed, all looking a little hungry and all talking in low earnest voices to solid and prosperous Americans. I was sure that they were selling something: bonds or insurance or automobiles. They were, at least, agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few words in the right key." That is material first, the supremacy of materialistic and young people in social pragmatic performance. At the garden party, after the music playing, "girls were putting their heads on men's shoulders in a puppyish, convivial way, girls were swooning backward playfully into men's arms, even into groups knowing that someone would arrest their falls." In another big room, a troupe from famous people are singing, "She had drunk a quantity of champagne and during the course of her song she had decided ineptly that everything was very very sad--she was not only singing, she was weeping too. Whenever there was a pause in the song she filled it with gasping broken sobs and then took up the lyric again in a quavering soprano. The tears coursed down her cheeks--not freely, however, for when they came into contact with her heavily beaded eyelashes they assumed an inky color, and pursued the rest of their way in slow black rivulets. A humorous suggestion was made that she sing the notes on her face where upon she threw up her hands, sank into a chair and went off into a deep vinous sleep." This series of hot words, which from the perspective of Nick, look on coldly, irony, the so-called "high society" true nature of the party and the guests’ arty.
In a word, Fitzgerald writes with skilled technique, vivid language, thought-provoking philosophical comments, making the novel always influenced by light quality, sad and helpless under the magnificent scene appearance" The Great Gatsby is an elegy of " jazz age ", which has also become an enduring classic.
Let’s come back to the book itself. Here comes the question what makes The Great Gatsby Great? On one hand I think the answer also is the image of Gatsby. Because of his profound love to Daisy even though the others become selfish and sophisticated in the society. He devotes himself to making big fortune for expecting Daisy’s return; he takes responsibility of car accident at the expense of being put in the prison. Yes, this great man displays something called Profound Love when the society members’ hearts becoming colder and colder. And I always feel sympathetic to Gatsby’s consequence. We may say how stupid he is to pay so much to Daisy, but in other words, how persistent he is to his believing about love. He always thinks that all his behaviors can make Daisy change her mind and come back. On the other hand, we can turn to the practical significance. 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 possesses. 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.
Early in 1920s when the capitalism of the American developed to a stage of the monopoly, the industry developed rapidly. The development of the economy has been a polarization of society and the young Americans experienced the prosperity of the Jazz Age and felt confused about the social context. They had an empty feeling of spirit. Then, they began to drink wine and spent money like water to seek the pleasure of the life. In the novel, Gatsby was the hero and the representative of the American Dream made by the author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gatsby was born in a poor family with no money and status. However, Daisy was born in a rich family. At first, it is a blow for Gatsby for the huge gap between their social status and wealth when he fell in love with Daisy. He used his whole life to love Daisy and began to attend many illicit activities to earn money. The purpose of these behaviors was that he could retain Daisy’s love. He made every possible effort to realize his dream. The American Dream has deviated from its original way obviously in Gatsby’s pursuit of the wealth and status. When he earned much money, he held parties and invited many persons every day to attract Daisy. In fact, Gatsby did not get others’ respect in the novel. When Daisy drove a car and killed her husband’s mistress, Gatsby helped her, took all the blame and lost his life finally. However, she did not have any shameful and grateful feelings for Gatsby’s behavior. In the end, Daisy went to other city with her husband to spend their holiday happily. Gatsby’s dream falling down represents the disillusionment of the American Dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald describes a progress of a man’s American Dream from beginning to the end, which is similar to the hero--Gatsby. So Fitzgerald expresses his own feelings sincerely in the novel. But the difference between Fitzgerald and Gatsby is that the author realized his American Dream was broken, Gatsby did not realize it at all. Gatsby did not know that he built an illusionary dream and this dream cannot realize forever. The sharp contrast between the ideal and the reality will inevitably result in the breakup of the dream. Gatsby’s whole life is a tragedy because he lived in the past and made an illusionary dream of the future. Although it is the American success story that hard working allows a man to become wealthy, the history of the American was mocked seriously by the author in the novel. The American Dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. The novel describes the social phenomenon of money first in the 1920s. Fitzgerald realized that he was unable to provide what Zelda really want, so he decided to make money by working at an advertising firm and writing short stories. And Zelda’s overpowering desire for wealth, fun, and leisure led to delay their weeding until he could prove a success. This Side of Paradise was published in 1920, which caused a great literary sensation. Fitzgerald earned enough money to convince Zelda that he could support her. Then, Scott and Zelda were married in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Now let’s draw a conclusion. In the novel, the author describes the hero—Gatsby’s whole life. When he was young, he fell in love with the beautiful girl—Daisy and he took her as his dream. He could do everything for her and gave up his nature to earn money as much as he could. Unfortunately, when he sacrificed his live for Daisy, he still did not get Daisy’s love. The author use Gatsby’s dream to symbolize the American Dream at that time. So his dream fallen down means the disillusionment of the American Dream. Gatsby lived in the past and made an illusionary dream of his life. His dream is illusory and unworthy and it is not the right time for him to use an inappropriate manner of self-display. When his native nature confronted with the ruthless and indifferent society, the disillusionment of the American dream is inevitable. For Gatsby, there will be no place to escape but he has to die in the end. However, the novel gives people some enlightenment in their life. It makes people believe that there will be a harvest if you work hard enough. Gatsby was influenced greatly by the dream of Franklin and Carnegie. He made a work schedule and wrote some proverbs to encourage himself. He showed a fighting spirit for young people in modern society.
I strongly recommend this book to you. As far as I am concerned, this story can also serve as a reminder for us. To live a meaningful life, we should carefully choose some dreams to pursue. And in the process of fulfilling our dreams, we should always be conscious about what we really desire. Anyhow, only by pursuing the proper dreams can we finally get to the deep springs of happiness.
To use one of my favorites sentences of The Great Gatsby as an ending. " So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. "
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