《了不起的盖茨比》中由尼克的处事态度透视当时的社会形态.doc

了不起的盖茨比中由尼克的处事态度透视当时的社会形态An Analysis of the Realistic World fromNicks Perspective in The Great GatsbyAbstract: F. Scott Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the finest and most successful novelist in the twentieth century America. He shows us that Jazz Age in his works. As the masterpiece, The Great Gatsby stands for the supreme of novels in the twentieth century. It is a tragedy about a man named Gatsby. He tried to achieve the success of material possessions for pursuing his love-Daisy. However, in that historical background, Gatsby failed to fulfill his dream because of that disillusionment world. He tried to be rich, even though he took an illegal way. Finally although he became wealthy in material, he was abandoned by both his love and his wealth. We can get to know the story of Gatsby following the narration of Nick. Readers must be impressive on the figure of “Nick” for his life attitude and his life way in that kind of disordered world. And Nick, in some way, is a successful character in that society compared with Gatsby. Analysis of that world from Nicks perspective is meaningful and useful.Key words: Jazz World; disillusionment; material possessions; morality; Nicks life attitude摘要： 菲茨杰拉德被誉为20世纪最成功的小说家之一。 他在他的作品中向我们展示了那个爵士音乐的时代。他的代表作了不起的盖茨比是20世纪小说的巅峰之作。这部小说讲述了一个叫盖茨比的悲剧故事。 为了追求他的爱人，盖茨比努力得到财富。然而他注定失败，在那个幻想破灭的时代。盖茨比为了成为富人，不惜使用违法的手段。最后，尽管他富有了，但也早已被他的爱人抛弃了。至此标志盖茨比美国梦的破灭。整个小说是在人物尼克的叙述中展开的。读者想必也对这一人物的处事态度印象很深。与盖茨比相比，尼克的生活应是成功的，他懂得如何在那样的时代保全自己再适当的帮助他人。对尼克的人物分析是十分必要和有用的。关键字： 爵士时代；幻想破灭；物质财富；道德；尼克的处事态度ContentI. Introduction.1 A. An introduction to the author and his writing background.1 B. An introduction to The Great Gatsby.2II. The Analysis of the Major Characters.3 A. Gatsby.3 B. Daisy Bushman .3 C. Tom Buchanan.4 D. George Wilson.5 E. Myrtle Wilson.5III. Exploring of Nicks Role.6 A. An eye-witness to the story of Gatsby .6 B. The link between the reader and Gatsby.7 C. Nicks reconstruction of events.7 D. A subjective account.7 E. A vague vision.8IV. Disillusion of Gatsbys American Dream from Nicks View8V. Conclusion.10Works Cited.10I. IntroductionA. An Introduction to the author-F. Scott Fitzgerald and His Writing BackgroundF. Scott Fitzgerald owns double characteristic. Fitzgeralds literary creation has close relationship with his personal life. He was born into a St. Paul middle-class family; he was not luck enough to enjoy material contentment. It was primarily due to his mothers family that Fitzgerald could be thought as someone who was born into a high class family. So his familys position was very ambiguous; neither “aristocrats” nor “nobodies”. His family affected his attitude towards the rich. He wrote to a friend, “I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich. It has colored entire life and works.” And that attitude is reflected in his books enormously. It comes to a conclusion from Fitzgerald life and his works that we can see the truth is that he lives in such an age of disillusionment, maybe he has no choice but to yield to the social situation. However, he is reluctant to do so, he tends to fight and strive for his perseverance and his dream. And he also wants to be successful in economy while realizing the essential and importance of morality. In some way, F. Scott Fitzgerald is painful because of the situation that he is absorbed in. F. Scott Fitzgerald wants to get out of there while he has to give in to the reality. So how can he release his indignation? He does in his literary works. And among all his works, The Great Gatsby is the master piece.F. Scott Fitzgerald is doomed to create a characteristic like Gatsby, because in Fitzgeralds life, he meets a girl named Zelda in the same way as Gatsby meets Daisy. In some way Daisy is the embodiment of Zelda. At the beginning, in order to win Zeldas love, Fitzgerald had to write for money to meet her material need. After they did get married, he worked even harder to support their expensive or even luxurious living style. However, Zelda suffered from mental frustration and had to be put in the asylum to be treated, which needed more money. His last years were spent in illness, alcohol, and personal instability. In 1940 he died of heart-attack. In the view of American history, the 20th century is a characteristic period, which stands for an age of disillusionment and reflects a common personality of the people in that moment. Entering the 20th century, America turns out to be very enormous in economy among the world. Such a society offers fair opportunity to those who want to be wealthy. So many common people like Gatsby try their best to become rich in material, that is why the age is called “the Gilded Age” However, once one obtained the material possession, one also drowned in it and could not turn back so that he/she neglected the value and importance of morality gradually and unconsciously.B. An Introduction to The Great Gatsby Published in the year 1925, The Great Gatsby is undoubtedly an autobiographical novel, into which Fitzgerald has written much of his personal experience with the upper class. The plot of the story is very simple. Gatsby, a poor youth from the Midwest, falls in love with Daisy, an upper class lady. But due to his poverty, Daisy leaves him and is married to a rich young man, Tom Buchanan. In order to win his lost love again, Gatsby tried his best to be rich though bootlegging and other illegal activities, thus earning enough money to buy a magnificent villa. From then on, he holds luxurious parties every weekend, hoping that this will attract Daisy to join. Through the arrangement of Nick, a cousin of Daisys and the narrator of the whole story, Gatsby meets Daisy again in his mansion and shows her his wealth and possessions in hopes that she will come back to him. But there is one thing that is Gatsby ignores the changes appearing in the woman he once loved so much. Daisy has changed. As a result, Daisy does cry it is not because she is moved by Gatsbys loyal and constant love for her, but because the shirt that Gatsby wears is so beautiful that she never sees one before. Eventually, Tom and Gatsby have a strong confrontation. Tom exposes Gatsbys low origins, while Gatsby tells Tom about his affair and how Daisy does not love him. Yet Gatsby seems to demand too much; he wants Daisy to admit that she never loved Tom, but she fails him by using evasive words. The tragedy comes when Gatsby takes Daisy back to New York and allows her to drive in order to calm her nerves. When they pass Wilsons garage, Daisy swerves to avoid another car and ends up hitting Mytle, Toms mistress, and kills her. Gatsby refused Nicks advice to leave the town until the situation calms, for he wants to make sure that Daisy is safe. However, he cannot ever imagine that Daisy and Tom plot to shift the blame on Gatsby. When George Wilson, driven mad by his wifes death, goes to seek out the killer, Tom Buchanan points him towards Gatsby. Wilson shoots Gatsby before committing suicide. Gatsbys funeral makes the tragedy sadder. Nick organizes the funeral, but finds that few have any concern for Gatsby. The guests who come to eat and drink at his parties do not even turn up. Much worse, the woman he loves and tries to protect has left the town with her husband to avoid responsibility. Thoroughly disgusted with life in New York, Nick decided to return to the mid-west.II. The Analysis of the Major CharactersA. GatsbyNick is perhaps the only person who really comes to understand Gatsby in the end. What make Gatsby “great” to Nick are not just the extravagance of his lifestyle and the fascinating enigma of his wealth, but his true personality; Nick slowly realizes that Gatsby, in his heart of hearts, doesnt care about wealth, or social status, or any of the other petty things that plague everyone else in his shallow world. Instead, Gatsby is motivated by the finest and most foolish of emotions love. From this point of view, Gatsbys love for Daisy is what drives him to reinvent himself, rather than greed or true ambition, and at the end of the day, this unsullied, heartfelt goal puts Gatsby ahead of the rest of the madding crowd. Despite the fact that he attempted to fulfill his “incorruptible dream” through distasteful, sometimes dishonest means, we still emerge from this story profoundly sympathetic to him; he may have been a fool at times, but hes a fool for love. Even though hes a self-created image built out of nothing, Gatsbys emotional honesty, eternal optimism, and simplicity of heart ironically single him out as the only real person in a crowd of fakes as Nick says, Gatsby is “better than the whole damn bunch put together.”B. Daisy Bushman Partially based on Fitzgeralds wife, Field, Daisy is a beautiful young woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nicks cousin and the object of Gatsbys love. As a young debutante in Louisville, Daisy was extremely popular among the military officers stationed near her home, including Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lied about his background to Daisy, claiming to be from a wealthy family in order to persuade her that he was worthy of her. Eventually, Gatsby won Daisys heart, and they made love before Gatsby left to fight in the war. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she chose instead to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy lifestyle and who had the support of her parents.After 1919, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, making her the single goal of all of his dreams and the main motivation behind his acquisition of immense wealth through criminal activity. To Gatsby, Daisy represents the paragon of perfectionshe has the advantages of charm, wealth, sophistication, grace, and aristocracy that he longed for as a child in North Dakota and that first attracted him to her. In reality, however, Daisy is not the short of Gatsbys ideals at all. She is beautiful and charming, but also fickle, shallow, bored, and sardonic. Nick characterizes her as a careless person who smashes things up and then retreats behind her money. Daisy proves her real nature when she chooses Tom over Gatsby in Chapter 7, then allows Gatsby to take the blame for killing Myrtle Wilson even though she herself was driving the car. Finally, rather than attended Gatsbys funeral, Daisy and Tom moved away, leaving no forwarding address.Like Zelda Fitzgerald, Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is capable of affection for example she seems genuinely fond of Nick and occasionally seems to love Gatsby sincerely), but not of sustained loyalty or care. She is indifferent even to her own infant daughter, never discussing her and treating her as an afterthought when she is introduced in Chapter 7. In Fitzgeralds conception of America in the 1920s, Daisy represents the amoral values of the aristocratic East Egg set.C. Tom BuchananTom Buchanan is Daisys husband, an extremely wealthy man, a bad man, and an athlete. Hes selfish and does what he needs to get what he wants. Most of all, he seeks control of his life and control of others. When Tom figures out that Daisy loves Gatsby, he forces a confrontation. He is then able to use Daisys momentary hesitation to regain love of his wife. Master of the situation once more, “He wont annoy you,” he tells her. “I think he realizes that his presumptuous little flirtation is over.” With that note of condescension, it is clear to all that Tom has the upper hand. Although Gatsby maintains hope beyond this scene, we all know its over. But the quality of Tom thats most likely to stick with you is the fact that hes a danger. While we never see him get violent with his wife, there are hints of his unbridled physicality when Daisy reveals a bruise on her finger that, although accidental, was caused by Tom (or the “brute” as she calls him). Although he might not be physically abusive to his wife, Tom certainly causes her some emotional damage. There is, of course, his series of affairs, but he hurts Daisy in other ways, too. When Daisy tells us about her daughter being born, she casually adds that “Tom was God knows where.” He is neither attentive nor sensitive towards his wife especially in contrast to Gatsby. But, of course, Toms violent streak really comes across when we see him break Myrtles nose with the “short, deft movement” of his open hand. The curt language Fitzgerald uses here makes it clear that such violence means little to Tom. D. George WilsonPoor George. And, seeing as hes one of the few characters without big flaws, it seems he doesnt really deserve it. From what we can tell, Wilson is hard-working and not cheating on his wife. Hes in a marriage with a woman who does not love him, but also cant respect him because of his poverty. Despite all of this, Wilson still blames himself for his wifes death. The conversations between him and Michaelis are simply agonizing to hear; George is clearly in terrible emotional pain. Not only has his wife been killed, but he also found out just before her death that shed been having an affair. This “George feels guilty” theory gains some credibility when he commits suicide after shooting Gatsby. The other thing to note about Wilson is that hes the only character who talks about God. He tells Myrtle that she “cant fool God”, that “God sees everything.” Again, he means for this to refer to her actions, but they implicitly comment on his own, and may speak once again to his reasons for committing suicide. His comments are also a reminder of notable absence of religion from the upper class, the class that smashes up things and creatures and is then able to retreat back into money. E. Myrtle WilsonWe get the feeling that Myrtle Wilson is not an especially smart woman. Strung along by Tom, Myrtle is convinced that he loves her and would leave his wife for her if he could. Because she is unhappy in her marriage to George, Myrtle is drawn to Tom for certain specific reasons. George is passive, but Tom is controlling and authoritative. Myrtle puts up with Toms physical abuse because she equates it with masculinity a quality that in her mind is lacking in her husband. She even yells at George, “throw me and down and beat me, you dirty little coward!” Myrtle also adds to the novels themes of class and wealth. She insists that she married below her caste, that she believed certain things about Ge