BOOK REVIEW OF The Great Gatsb
ⅠIntroduction
The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was a writer of fictions and stories, whose works are the symbol of the jazz age.He is widely regarded by people as one of the most important American writers of the 20th century,the great Gatsby published in 1925 is one of his greatest novel and most deliberate work,the postwar society of America can find finest expression in it, provided a vivid picture of American dreamthe work contributes to his fame becoming an outstanding writer in America literary history.
ⅡBrief Summary of the Content
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. 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.
Ⅲ Analysis
In this part, I would like to analyze three questions:(1) Why Gatsby is great? (2) what is the America dream? (3) How the writer write this book(Literature appreciation)
3.1 Why Gatsby is great?
First and obviously, the success of Gatsby made him great. He started from scratch, but ended up a successful man. Rumors around him, everybody wanted to know who he is. He became a celebrity. To some extent, he achieved his American Dream.
Second, Gatsby was a dream-pursuit man in such a money-oriented society. In the last chapter of this book, the writer wrote: “He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.” In 1920s, people can not wait to be richer, leaving their spiritual word void. But Gatsby, unlike those men, he knew what he really wanted and he did whatever was necessary to meet the goal, which is really valuable compared with the illusory American dream. He made an effort to become a rich man, building luxury house and holding sumptuous feast to attract the woman. Gatsby was just a fool for love, he almost spent his whole adult life for a so-called dream, a girl, Daisy. He is like a kid with full of naïve imagination of love, which was against the reality. Because the society back then was materialistic. People prefer money to pure love. Love was the cheapest thing back then that Gatsby held high, which yet made him the purest man in that society. In the course of turning rich, Gatsby didn’t forget his original goal. His desire didn’t expand as the change of the society. When people all pursue vanity and material pleasure, Gatsby used his own hands to build his empire and still uphold his lifetime belief. Gatsby is great, for that he knew what he wanted and stuck to it. More importantly, Gatsby had his spiritual pursuit, not only for the money and fame.
3.2 What is the America dream?
President Roosevelt once said: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. ” The American dream means that everyone, no matter what social status is, can achieve his goal through his own hard work. The ideology is based on the origin of the America, as a belief carved in people’s minds. The best example is Abraham Lincoln. He was a person who had nothing at his early years, but he became the 16th president of the United States through his own efforts.
3.3 Literature appreciation
(1) symbolism
Symbolism, as a exclusive artistic method, has two vital meanings according to Webster: one is to clarify imperceptible things by using visible symbols; the other is the links and relationship between symbols and meaning. Therefore symbolism in novel aims to present the concealed things and thoughts under phenomena. The using of symbolism plays a important role in the story. The function of symbolism made this work exceed the narrow individual world, making a connection between subjective and objective. Symbolism exceeds the plot, the description and moral significance of the story. The application of symbolism brings the subject of the novels to a new altitude and contributes to its reputation. It was possible to see the connection between the symbols and themes, what the concealed meaning of the story is.
Take “the green lamp” in the novel for an example.
People often associated the color green with youth,spring ,hope.Howeve,in this novel,the color green was shown by the author in a different meaning.The green light on another side of the seashore is the main symbolism in this novel.Gatsbys’sfaith is in the green light, it was his future wonderland and the biggest dream in his life. In the evening, Gatsby always stood by himself staring at the green light and open his arm to embrace the green light. The green light is youth and love for Gatsby ,as if the embodiment of Daisy. Although these things are beyond his ability to achieve,Gatsby still put all his effort to pursue his unpractical dream. At the end of this novel, nick remember the green light which Gatsby trusted, the light looks like not far to reach, but you cannot get it forever .His aim seems aspirational rather than feasible.In the fiction, green can be seen in every step in Gatsby’s life. The image of green lamp showed in the novel three times correspondingly at the very important points of the plot’s development in this novel, and plays a vital and very function in the course of developing the protagonist Gatsby’s character. The green light stands for the expectation of Gatsby, and the most important object in this novel is also the color green, which stands at the end of the port of the Daisy’s house.The light is so weak and can’t be seen easily,whichwas just like his unachievable dream can never be powerful enough to exemplify Gatsby, but the light shines every night and every day, just like his dream for Daisy is never quenchable. It is appropriate to compare his action to a certain pilgrim.
(2) Metaphor and Simile
A metaphor is an imaginative way of describing something by referring to something else which is the same in a particular way. For example, if you want to say that someone is very shy and frightened of things, you might say that they are a mouse.
Simile means an object, scene or action introduced by way of comparison for explanatory, illustrative or merely ornamental purpose.
Following are some examples in this novel.
①Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face.
②So engrossed was she that she had no consciousness of being observed, and one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture.
③if personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.
Those analogies vividly reveal the character's personality, and even imply the theme.
(3)Narrative
Fitzgerald uses a retrospective narrator who has a selective role to present events, talks about them, and sum them up, instead of directly and dramatically exhibiting events and conversations. The narrator constantly appears in the narrative .The narrator’s presence is closely related to the functions he assumes in the narrative. For example, “So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight”(117).At that moment in the story no one among the three can know the traffic accident. It is the narrator's voice. Almost all the information about the characters and their actions are presented by Nick. Here, the narrator seems to disappear and the reader is left to draw his own conclusions from what he sees and hears. The apparent disappearance of the narrator in The Great Gatsby results from the way in which so many of the story’s events are filtered directly through the perceptions, cognitions, and emotions of that Nick who participates in them. While insisting on the story's status as memory Fitzgerald achieves a sense of absolute immediacy in the party scenes, re-introduction of Daisy and Gatsby. Despite the distance resulting from retrospective narration, “this temporal distance between the story and the narrating instance involves no modal distance Between the story and the narrative: no loss, no weakening of the mimetic illusion”(Genette168-69)
ⅣEvaluation
Critics have generally approved that The Great Gatsby, which was published in 1925, is the masterpiece of Fitzgerald’s literary career. It evokes not only the atmosphere of the jazz-age searching for the American dream of wealth and happiness, but also the deeper questions of the evaporation of traditional values in a society atmosphere where the people was dominated by increasing materialism and cynicism.
In my point of view, on the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. Actually it is a story of the distorted American dream failing in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. The American dream is that one can pursue their goals in life through hard work and moral righteousness. But in 1920’s, 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. 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.
I can not help thinking of the theme Fitzgerald trying to convey. One thing may be the lonely void of people’s spiritual world. I am deeply impressed by chapter 3, where a vivid description of a party is given. There were beautiful girls, drunk men, and boisterous crowds there, but none of them perceived the pointless of their lives and the barren of their minds. To see this phenomenon deeper, there were two circumstances underlying it. The first is the lack of dreams. Some people, especially the people of the upper class, lived an aimless life. They wasted their time and money and took an indifferent attitude towards life. They chased for temporary ecstasy but lost their identity in eternity, namely Daisy and Tom.
Now we are on the initial stage of the socialist market economy. Our GDP and material living standard are higher than before. But our society is not in harmony. It is a little like the American roaring jazz age. In this money crazy modern times, many people make money from fraud, bribery, exploitation and smuggling. Also in this material world, we are thirsty, worried and lost. Our goals swing to money and materialism too much. We should swing it back to true love, fraternity, righteousness, sincerity and art a little.
I would like to quote the last paragraph from the book to end the review.
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired in the world. Great is to pursuit what you think is important, but not the world think. It is not win fame and fortune that is great, but to adhere to one’s pure heart.
Ⅴreference
1对《了不起的盖茨比》的叙事分析-------北京第二外国语学院 刘丽
2《了不起的盖茨比》中的象征主义--------郑州航空工业管理学院 王珊珊
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