The Bubble Dream

The prototype of the main character Gatsby is the author himself. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was once an officer and during his military days he fell in love with a girl. Although the girl agreed to marry him, she delayed the wedding until Fitzgerald could prove a success. Also, Fitzgerald’s neighbors in Great Neck included many prominent and newly wealthy New Yorkers who were considered as “new money”. This life experience promoted his writing of The Great Gatsby.

In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the time—the Roaring Twenties.

Roaring Twenties was a period of sustained economic prosperity with a distinctive cultural edge in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, particularly in major cities like New York.  And Fitzgerald used the features of the time to build the story of Gatsby.

As we know, The Great Gatsby is one of the representative works that reflects the theme “the disillusion of the American Dream”.  The phrase "American Dream"  was popularized by the 1931 book Epic of America:But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves 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.

During the period of economic boom, the meaning of the American dream became the pursuit of material prosperity and people become money-centred. They  worked hard in order to get fancier houses nicer cars and higher fame. As we can see in the book, though born into a farming family, Gatsby eventually became a millionaire through his efforts, which seems to represent the success of the American Dream. But actually, Daisy is Gatsby’s ultimate pursuit. She was the incarnation of beautiful and perfection for him. His love for her is so strong that the only reason why he worked so hard is Daisy, rather than money itself. There was a time when he seemed so close to his dream and everything was going on perfectly as he expected. However, the dream was just like a bubble, beautiful but fragile, unable to escape the fate of burst. In the end, along with the gunshot was the broken of the bubble and the disillusion of the American Dream. He never got the chance to fulfill his own American dream of marrying Daisy though it was once so close. That is because in Gatsby’s mind, Daisy should be a pure girl with beauty and love. However, she was just a common girl in the 1920s who was charged by the preference of wealth, entertainment and enjoyment. Gatsby’s unreal dream destined his failure. Roger Pearson concluded that the American dream pursued by Gatsby "is, in reality, a nightmare", bringing nothing but discontent and disillusionment to those who chase it as they realize its unsustainability and ultimately its unattainability. Actually, the bubble also reflects the American Dream of the 1920s. The easy-obtained fortune and falling moral standards gradually corrupt the  pursuit of personal freedom and happiness.

At the very end of the book, the author says, “So we beat on ,boats against the current ,borne back ceaselessly into the past. ”It is a sigh for both the unattainable dreams and the social status. Gatsby fought hard, trying to go back to the beautiful past. Though the outcome is not that pleasant, at least he persists in pursuing beauty and pureness rather than immersed in the world of luxury and dissipation, with the green light always on. And that is why Gatsby the Great Gatsby.

2016-06-03

分享

喜欢(0)