了不起的盖茨比英文介绍

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了不起的盖茨比英文介绍篇一
《the great gatsby(了不起的盖茨比) 英文介绍及赏析》

The Great Gatsby F.Scott.Fitzgerald

Context

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor Francis Scott Key, the author of The Star-Spangled Banner. Fitzgerald was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Though an intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Despite being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end.

Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama. There he met and 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. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him.

Many of these events from Fitzgerald’s early life appear in his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Like Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is a thoughtful young man from Minnesota, educated at an Ivy League school (in Nick’s case, Yale), who moves to New York after the war. Also similar to Fitzgerald is Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes wealth and luxury and who falls in love with a beautiful young woman while stationed at a military camp in the South.

Having become a celebrity, Fitzgerald fell into a wild, reckless life-style of parties and decadence, while desperately trying to please Zelda by writing to earn money. Similarly, Gatsby amasses a great deal of wealth at a relatively young age, and devotes himself to acquiring possessions and throwing parties that he believes will enable him to win Daisy’s love. As the giddiness of the Roaring Twenties dissolved into the bleakness of the Great Depression, however, Zelda suffered a nervous breakdown and Fitzgerald battled alcoholism, which hampered his writing. He published Tender Is the Night in 1934, and sold short stories to The Saturday Evening Post to support his lavish lifestyle. In 1937, he left for Hollywood to write screenplays, and in 1940, while working on his novel The Love of the Last Tycoon, died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four.

Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed “the Jazz Age.” Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1919), made millionaires out of bootleggers, and an underground culture of revelry sprang up. Sprawling private parties managed to elude police notice, and “speakeasies”—secret clubs that sold liquor—thrived. The chaos and violence of World War I left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the war turned to wild and extravagant living to compensate. The staid conservatism and timeworn values of the previous decade were turned on their ear, as money, opulence, and exuberance became the order of the day.

Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which unrestrained materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised.

Plot Overview

Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to have established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth. Nick’s next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night.

Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at Yale and has social connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, an erstwhile classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also learns a bit about Daisy and Tom’s marriage: Jordan tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose.

As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsby’s legendary parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone “old sport.” Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsby’s extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.

After a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wife’s relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans’ house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to drive into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand, and he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal—his fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him.

When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that Gatsby’s car has struck and killed Myrtle, Tom’s lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle, but that Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtle’s husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George, who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots himself.

Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby’s life and for the emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects that just as Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsby’s power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him “great,” Nick reflects that the era of dreaming—both Gatsby’s dream and the American dream—is over.

Character List

Nick Carraway - The novel’s narrator, Nick is a young man from Minnesota who, after being educated at Yale and fighting in World War I, goes to New York City to learn the bond business. Honest, tolerant, and inclined to reserve judgment, Nick often serves as a confidant for those with troubling secrets. After moving to West Egg, a fictional area of Long Island that is home to the newly rich, Nick quickly befriends his next-door neighbor, the mysterious Jay Gatsby. As Daisy Buchanan’s cousin, he facilitates the rekindling of the romance between her and Gatsby. The Great

Gatsby is told entirely through Nick’s eyes; his thoughts and perceptions shape and color the story.

Nick Carraway (In-Depth Analysis)

Jay Gatsby - The title character and protagonist of the novel, Gatsby is a fabulously wealthy young man living in a Gothic mansion in West Egg. He is famous for the lavish parties he throws every Saturday night, but no one knows where he comes from, what he does, or how he made his fortune. As the novel progresses, Nick learns that Gatsby was born James Gatz on a farm in North Dakota; working for a millionaire made him dedicate his life to the achievement of wealth. When he met Daisy while training to be an officer in Louisville, he fell in love with her. Nick also learns that Gatsby made his fortune through criminal activity, as he was willing to do anything to gain the social position he thought necessary to win Daisy. Nick views Gatsby as a deeply flawed man, dishonest and vulgar, whose extraordinary optimism and power to transform his dreams into reality make him “great” nonetheless.

Jay Gatsby (In-Depth Analysis)

Daisy Buchanan - Nick’s cousin, and the woman Gatsby loves. As a young woman in Louisville before the war, Daisy was courted by a number of officers, including Gatsby. She fell in love with Gatsby and promised to wait for him. However, Daisy harbors a deep need to be loved, and when a wealthy, powerful young man named Tom Buchanan asked her to marry him, Daisy decided not to wait for Gatsby after all. Now a beautiful socialite, Daisy lives with Tom across from Gatsby in the fashionable East Egg district of Long Island. She is sardonic and somewhat cynical, and behaves superficially to mask her pain at her husband’s constant infidelity.

Daisy Buchanan (In-Depth Analysis)

Tom Buchanan - Daisy’s immensely wealthy husband, once a member of Nick’s social club at Yale. Powerfully built and hailing from a socially solid old family, Tom is an arrogant, hypocritical bully. His social attitudes are laced with racism and sexism, and he never even considers trying to live up to the moral standard he demands from those around him. He has no moral qualms about his own extramarital affair with Myrtle, but when he begins to suspect Daisy and Gatsby of having an affair, he becomes outraged and forces a confrontation.

Jordan Baker - Daisy’s friend, a woman with whom Nick becomes romantically involved during the course of the novel. A competitive golfer, Jordan represents one of the “new women” of the 1920s—cynical, boyish, and self-centered. Jordan is beautiful, but also dishonest: she cheated in order to win her first golf tournament and continually bends the truth.

Myrtle Wilson - Tom’s lover, whose lifeless husband George owns a run-down garage in the valley of ashes. Myrtle herself possesses a fierce vitality and desperately looks for a way to improve her situation. Unfortunately for her, she chooses Tom, who treats her as a mere object of his desire.

George Wilson - Myrtle’s husband, the lifeless, exhausted owner of a run-down auto shop at the edge of the valley of ashes. George loves and idealizes Myrtle, and is devastated by her affair with Tom. George is consumed with grief when Myrtle is killed. George is comparable to Gatsby in that both are dreamers and both are ruined by their unrequited love for women who love Tom.

Owl Eyes - The eccentric, bespectacled drunk whom Nick meets at the first party he attends at Gatsby’s mansion. Nick finds Owl Eyes looking through Gatsby’s library, astonished that the books are real.

Klipspringer - The shallow freeloader who seems almost to live at Gatsby’s mansion, taking advantage of his host’s money. As soon as Gatsby dies, Klipspringer disappears—he does not attend the funeral, but he does call Nick about a pair of tennis shoes that he left at Gatsby’s mansion.

Analysis of Major Characters

Jay Gatsby

The title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved this lofty goal by participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities. From his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty and longed for wealth and sophistication—he dropped out of St. Olaf’s College after only two weeks because he could not bear the janitorial job with which he was paying his tuition. Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in World War I in 1917. Gatsby immediately fell in love with Daisy’s aura of luxury, grace, and charm, and lied to her about his own background in order to convince her that he was good enough for her. Daisy promised to wait for him when he left for the war, but married Tom Buchanan in 1919, while Gatsby was studying at Oxford after the war in an attempt to gain an education. From that moment on, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, and his acquisition of millions of dollars, his purchase of a gaudy mansion on West Egg, and his lavish weekly parties are all merely means to that end.

Fitzgerald delays the introduction of most of this information until fairly late in the novel. Gatsby’s reputation precedes him—Gatsby himself does not appear in a speaking role until Chapter III. Fitzgerald initially presents Gatsby as the aloof, enigmatic host of the unbelievably opulent parties thrown every week at his mansion. He appears surrounded by spectacular luxury, courted by powerful men and beautiful women. He is the subject of a whirlwind of gossip throughout New York and is already a kind of legendary celebrity before he is ever introduced to the reader. Fitzgerald propels the novel forward through the early chapters by shrouding Gatsby’s background and the source of his wealth in mystery (the reader learns about Gatsby’s childhood in Chapter VI and receives definitive proof of his criminal dealings in Chapter VII). As a result, the reader’s first, distant impressions of Gatsby strike quite a different note from that of the lovesick, naive young man who emerges during the later part of the novel.

Fitzgerald uses this technique of delayed character revelation to emphasize the theatrical quality of Gatsby’s approach to life, which is an important part of his personality. Gatsby has literally created his own character, even changing his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby to represent his reinvention of himself. As his relentless quest for Daisy demonstrates, Gatsby has an extraordinary ability to transform his hopes and dreams into reality; at the beginning of the novel, he appears to the reader just as he desires to appear to the world. This talent for self-invention is what gives Gatsby his quality of “greatness”: indeed, the title “The Great Gatsby” is reminiscent of billings for such vaudeville magicians as “The Great Houdini” and “The Great Blackstone,” suggesting that the persona of Jay Gatsby is a masterful illusion.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.

(See Important Quotations Explained)

As the novel progresses and Fitzgerald deconstructs Gatsby’s self-presentation, Gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything on his dreams, not realizing that his dreams are unworthy of him. Gatsby invests Daisy with an idealistic perfection that she cannot possibly attain in reality and pursues her with a passionate zeal that blinds him to her limitations. His dream of her disintegrates, revealing the corruption that wealth causes and the unworthiness of the goal, much in the way Fitzgerald sees the American dream crumbling in the 1920s, as America’s powerful optimism, vitality, and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth.

Gatsby is contrasted most consistently with Nick. Critics point out that the former, passionate and active, and the latter, sober and reflective, seem to represent two sides of Fitzgerald’s personality. Additionally, whereas Tom is a cold-hearted, aristocratic bully, Gatsby is a loyal and good-hearted man. Though his lifestyle and attitude differ greatly from those of George Wilson, Gatsby and Wilson share the fact that they both lose their love interest to Tom.

Nick Carraway

If Gatsby represents one part of Fitzgerald’s personality, the flashy celebrity who pursued and glorified wealth in order to impress the woman he loved, then Nick represents another part: the quiet, reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East. A young man (he turns thirty during the course of the novel) from Minnesota, Nick travels to New York in 1922 to learn the bond business. He lives in the West Egg district of Long Island, next door

to Gatsby. Nick is also Daisy’s cousin, which enables him to observe and assist the resurgent love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. As a result of his relationship to these two characters, Nick is the perfect choice to narrate the novel, which functions as a personal memoir of his experiences with Gatsby in the summer of 1922.

Nick is also well suited to narrating The Great Gatsby because of his temperament. As he tells the reader in Chapter I, he is tolerant, open-minded, quiet, and a good listener, and, as a result, others tend to talk to him and tell him their secrets. Gatsby, in particular, comes to trust him and treat him as a confidant. Nick generally assumes a secondary role throughout the novel, preferring to describe and comment on events rather than dominate the action. Often, however, he functions as Fitzgerald’s voice, as in his extended meditation on time and the American dream at the end of Chapter IX. Insofar as Nick plays a role inside the narrative, he evidences a strongly mixed reaction to life on the East Coast, one that creates a powerful internal conflict that he does not resolve until the end of the book. On the one hand, Nick is attracted to the fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of New York. On the other hand, he finds that lifestyle grotesque and damaging. This inner conflict is symbolized throughout the book by Nick’s romantic affair with Jordan Baker. He is attracted to her vivacity and her sophistication just as he is repelled by her dishonesty and her lack of consideration for other people.

Nick states that there is a “quality of distortion” to life in New York, and this lifestyle makes him lose his equilibrium, especially early in the novel, as when he gets drunk at Gatsby’s party in Chapter II. After witnessing the unraveling of Gatsby’s dream and presiding over the appalling spectacle of Gatsby’s funeral, Nick realizes that the fast life of revelry on the East Coast is a cover for the terrifying moral emptiness that the valley of ashes symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this insight demonstrates, he returns to Minnesota in search of a quieter life structured by more traditional moral values.

Daisy Buchanan

Partially based on Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, Daisy is a beautiful young woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nick’s cousin and the object of Gatsby’s 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 convince her that he was worthy of her. Eventually, Gatsby won Daisy’s 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 perfection—she has the aura 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 falls far short of Gatsby’s ideals. 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 VII, then allows Gatsby to take the blame for killing Myrtle Wilson even though she herself was driving the car. Finally, rather than attend Gatsby’s funeral, Daisy and Tom move away, leaving no forwarding address.

Like Zelda Fitzgerald, Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is capable of affection (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 VII. In Fitzgerald’s conception of America in the 1920s, Daisy represents the amoral values of the aristocratic East Egg set.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s

On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess.

Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. A person from any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracy—families with old wealth—scorned the newly rich industrialists and speculators. Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.

Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social trends. Nick and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the newfound cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from the war. The various social climbers and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsby’s parties evidence the greedy scramble for wealth. The clash between “old money” and “new money” manifests itself in the novel’s symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s fortune symbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging.

As Fitzgerald saw it (and as Nick explains in Chapter IX), the American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast. The main plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as Gatsby’s dream of loving Daisy is ruined by the difference in their respective social statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough money to impress her, and the rampant materialism that characterizes her lifestyle. Additionally, places and objects in The Great Gatsby have meaning only because characters instill them with meaning: the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg best exemplify this idea. In Nick’s mind, the ability to create meaningful symbols constitutes a central component of the American dream, as early Americans invested their new nation with their own ideals and values.

Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. 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.

The Hollowness of the Upper Class

One of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth, specifically, how the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from and relate to the old aristocracy of the country’s richest families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East

Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes’ invitation to lunch. In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, epitomized by the Buchanans’ tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker.

What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in heart, as the East Eggers prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies who are so used to money’s ability to ease their minds that they never worry about hurting others. The Buchanans exemplify this stereotype when, at the end of the novel, they simply move to a new house far away rather than condescend to attend Gatsby’s funeral. Gatsby, on the other hand, whose recent wealth derives from criminal activity, has a sincere and loyal heart, remaining outside Daisy’s window until four in the morning in Chapter VII simply to make sure that Tom does not hurt her. Ironically, Gatsby’s good qualities (loyalty and love) lead to his death, as he takes the blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting Daisy be punished, and the Buchanans’ bad qualities (fickleness and selfishness) allow them to remove themselves from the tragedy not only physically but psychologically.

Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Geography

Throughout the novel, places and settings epitomize the various aspects of the 1920s American society that Fitzgerald depicts. East Egg represents the old aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich, the valley of ashes the moral and social decay of America, and New York City the uninhibited, amoral quest for money and pleasure. Additionally, the East is connected to the moral decay and social cynicism of New York, while the West (including Midwestern and northern areas such as Minnesota) is connected to more traditional social values and ideals. Nick’s analysis in Chapter IX of the story he has related reveals his sensitivity to this dichotomy: though it is set in the East, the story is really one of the West, as it tells how people originally from west of the Appalachians (as all of the main characters are) react to the pace and style of life on the East Coast.

Weather

As in much of Shakespeare’s work, the weather in The Great Gatsby unfailingly matches the emotional and narrative tone of the story. Gatsby and Daisy’s reunion begins amid a pouring rain, proving awkward and melancholy; their love reawakens just as the sun begins to come out. Gatsby’s climactic confrontation with Tom occurs on the hottest day of the summer, under the scorching sun (like the fatal encounter between Mercutio and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet). Wilson kills Gatsby on the first day of autumn, as Gatsby floats in his pool despite a palpable chill in the air—a symbolic attempt to stop time and restore his relationship with Daisy to the way it was five years before, in 1917.

Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Green Light

Situated at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsby’s West Egg lawn, the green light represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and in Chapter I he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. In Chapter IX, Nick compares the green light to how America, rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the new nation.

The Valley of Ashes

First introduced in Chapter II, the valley of ashes between West Egg and New York City consists of a long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes. It represents the moral and social decay that results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves with regard for nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of ashes also symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.

The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg

The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They may represent God staring down upon and judging American society as a moral wasteland, though the novel never makes this point explicitly. Instead, throughout the novel, Fitzgerald suggests that symbols only have meaning because characters instill them with meaning. The connection between the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg and God exists only in George Wilson’s grief-stricken mind. This lack of concrete significance contributes to the unsettling nature of the image. Thus, the eyes also come to represent the essential meaninglessness of the world and the arbitrariness of the mental process by which people invest objects with meaning. Nick explores these ideas in Chapter VIII, when he imagines Gatsby’s final thoughts as a depressed consideration of the emptiness of symbols and dreams.

了不起的盖茨比英文介绍篇二
《the_great_gatsby(了不起的盖茨比)_英文介绍及赏析》

After Reading The Great Gatsby

One time my classmates introduced The Great Gatsby to me, I was interested in it at that time. So I read it by myself. Now I want to introduce to you.

At first, I want to introduce the writer and the background to you. This novel was written by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, a writer in America. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Though an intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Despite being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end.

Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama. There he met and 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. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him. Many of these events from Fitzgerald’s early life appear in his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Like Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is a thoughtful young man from Minnesota, educated at an Ivy League school, who moves to New York after the war. Also similar to Fitzgerald is Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes wealth and luxury and who falls in love with a beautiful young woman while stationed at a military camp in the South.

Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed “the Jazz Age.” Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, made millionaires out of bootleggers, and an underground culture of revelry sprang up. Sprawling private parties managed to elude police notice, and “speakeasies”—secret clubs that sold liquor—thrived. The chaos and violence of World War I left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the war turned to wild and extravagant living to compensate. The staid conservatism and timeworn values of the previous decade were turned on their ear, as money, opulence, and exuberance became the order of the day.

Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which unrestrained materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised.

Secondly, I want to introduce the main plot to you. This book mainly talks about a story that Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to have established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth. Nick’s next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night.

Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at Yale and has social connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, an erstwhile classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also learns a bit about Daisy and Tom’s marriage: Jordan tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose.

As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsby’s legendary parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone “old sport.” Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsby’s extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.

After a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wife’s relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans’ house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to drive into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand, and he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal—his fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him. When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they

discover that Gatsby’s car has struck and killed Myrtle, Tom’s lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle, but that Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtle’s husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George, who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots himself.

Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby’s life and for the emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects that just as Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsby’s power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him “great,” Nick reflects that the era of dreaming—both Gatsby’s dream and the American dream—is over.

At last, I want to analyze something after reading this book. On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess.

Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social trends. Nick and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the newfound cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from the war. The various social climbers and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsby’s parties evidence the greedy scramble for wealth. The clash between “old money” and “new money” manifests itself in the novel’s symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s fortune symbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging.

As Fitzgerald saw it, the American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast. The main plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as Gatsby’s dream of loving Daisy is ruined by the difference in their respective social statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough money to impress her, and the rampant materialism that characterizes her lifestyle. Additionally, places and objects in The Great Gatsby have meaning only because characters instill them with meaning: the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg best exemplify this idea. In Nick’s mind, the ability to create meaningful symbols constitutes a central component of the American dream, as early Americans invested their new nation with their own ideals and values.

Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. 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.

What’s more, one of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth, specifically, how the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from and relate to the old aristocracy of the country’s richest families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes’ invitation to lunch. In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, epitomized by the Buchanans’ tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker.

What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in heart, as the East Eggers prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies who are so used to money’s ability to ease their minds that they never worry about hurting others. The Buchanans exemplify this stereotype when, at the end of the novel, they simply move to a new house far away rather than condescend to attend Gatsby’s funeral. Gatsby, on the other hand, whose recent wealth derives from criminal activity, has a sincere and loyal heart, remaining outside Daisy’s window until four in the morning in Chapter VII simply to make sure that Tom does not hurt her. Ironically, Gatsby’s good qualities (loyalty and love) lead to his death, as he takes the blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting Daisy be punished, and the Buchanans’ bad qualities (fickleness and selfishness) allow them to remove themselves from the tragedy not only physically but psychologically.

All in all, it is a good book for you to read and learn something about America at that time.

翻译学院

翻译方向

纪英蕾

2010417735

了不起的盖茨比英文介绍篇三
《了不起的盖茨比中文简介》

了不起的盖茨比

《了不起的盖茨比》是菲茨杰拉德写的，他生于1896年以及死于1940年。1920年因小说《尘世乐园》而一举成名。他出版过的长篇小说《夜色温柔》，《人间天堂》等。发表过160篇短篇小说，有《本杰明的奇幻之旅》，《冰宫》，《冬之梦》，《明智之举》等等。在第81届奥斯卡获得3项奖项的电影《返老还童》就是有他的短篇小说《本杰明的奇幻之旅》改编。二十世纪末，美国学术界权威在百年英语文学长河中选出一百部最优秀的小说，《了不起的盖茨比》和《夜色温柔》均榜上有名，前者更高居第二位。这部小说1925年出版，而我读的是2008年由航空工业出版社的版本。

小说以尼克的口吻叙说了盖茨比的故事。尼克是个厌倦家乡（美国中西部）的生活而来到纽约。并在市郊长岛西卵租了一套小房子。他是黛西的表哥。而盖茨比是他的邻居，住在豪华的盖茨比公馆。盖茨比年轻时曾与黛西相恋，但因家境不好而分手，后来他参加第一次世界大战，而黛西则嫁给了富家公子汤姆，并生下一个女儿。

五年后，黛西一家由芝加哥搬到西部。尼克开始和他们往来密切。五年内盖茨比用非法手段积聚大量财富。追随黛西来到纽约。在黛西家对面买下豪华别墅—盖茨比公馆。而且每周六在别墅举行大型就会。就是为吸引已婚的黛西相会。从而复活他们之间已失去的感情。

一次偶然机会盖茨比知道尼克是黛西的表兄。请求他安排与黛西的会面。之后他们频繁幽会。他渐渐发现黛西的虚荣与俗气。盖茨比的美丽旧梦终于被打碎了，但他还在做最后的挣扎，仍对黛西抱有一丝幻想，以至遭遇了更加凄惨可悲的结局。后来黛西在一次酒后驾驶盖茨比的车时轧死了汤姆的情妇，却与汤姆一道密谋并残忍地嫁祸于盖茨比，导致死者的丈夫突然闯入盖茨比家中并开枪打死了盖茨比，然后自杀身亡。而黛西则和汤姆去欧洲旅行了。在葬礼上盖茨比可怜的父亲和你可两人。使盖茨比最终彻底成为自私而残忍的黛西的牺牲品。

在我看来，盖茨比是个优秀人。他总是表现的风度翩翩，极有绅士风度。就像尼克说的一样“He smiled understandingly – much more than

understandingly. It was you may come across four or five times in life. It faced – or seemed to you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself…”。而且他也是个有理想的人。在他年青时就知道自我训练。但他的梦想是黛西，它超越了黛西本身，超越了一切。盖茨比是追求美国孟繁荣典型列子，他的命运因一个女人而改变，这是他的悲剧。

可以说黛西是一般天使一般魔鬼。他是一个保守又用情专一的女人。年轻时，不管世俗的眼光与盖茨比相爱，甚至愿抛弃一切和他远走高飞。即使汤姆非常花心婚后一直对丈夫衷忠不渝。从不从做出任何出格的事。他也是个典型的拜金女。用盖茨比的话说“她的声音充满钱”。他的自私与愚蠢导致了盖茨比的悲剧。 作者把自己的经历同美国的经历相结合。缔造了这篇小说。作者的妻子泽尔达是一个被物质宠坏的富家女，就像黛西一样。有人说是泽尔达毁了他的天赋，也有人说是她造就了菲茨杰拉德。总之，盖茨比的经历一部分和作者是相似的。 盖茨比之所以“了不起”是因为他真诚而执著地等待追求着心中珍藏的爱。在人们纵情享乐、奢华骄逸的社会风气盛行时。但是，在那个物质主导的环境中，

无论是盖茨比、黛西，还是汤姆，对爱情的追求、付出与转移，都跟金钱和地位有着不可分割的联系。

这个故事发生在20世纪20年代——被称为“爵士乐”和“金元”的时代。小说采用第一人称的叙事手法。仿佛书中发生的一切都是尼克的亲身见闻。它以一种独特的文学视野和新颖的表现风格。深刻揭示了“爵士时代”的“美国梦”破灭的根源.战后美国经济繁荣时期,拜金主义生活潮流被表现得淋漓尽致。而他是被掩盖下的自私冷漠的人性本质下的。

了不起的盖茨比英文介绍篇四
《了不起的盖茨比英文论文》

摘 要

弗朗西斯·司科特·菲茨杰拉德是二十世纪美国最重要的作家之一,被推崇为“爵士时代”的编年史家和桂冠诗人。他不仅亲身经历了美国历史上“最会纵乐、最讲究炫丽”的时代的生活,而且以敏锐的目光,审视着那个时代所发生的一切。 《了不起的盖茨比》于1925年发表,是二十世纪最优秀的小说之一。托·斯·艾略特称它是“亨利·詹姆斯以后美国小说迈出的第一步。《了不起的盖茨比》是对美国梦的实质的批评。美国文化的特征之一表现为:在强化追求物质财富的成功的同时,忽视了为追求物质财富的成功而采取合法手段的重要性。

本论文从人物分析着手，从社会、历史、以及作者自身经历和世界观等多方面探讨导致主人公盖茨比梦毁人亡的根源存在。美国梦幻灭不仅有其深刻的社会历史原因，且与盖茨比性格中的自我毁灭因素息息相关。通过分析我们可以看出盖茨比之梦的历史渊源和实质，盖茨比性格中的天直单纯和不谙世故以及以汤姆、黛西为代表的美国社会的冷酷无情和道德沦丧。这些从根本上决定了美国梦的幻灭。本文主要通过人物分析来分析作品的主题，并将二者有机地统一起来，意在较全面深刻地解读作品的内涵。

关键词：《了不起的盖茨比》；弗朗西斯·司科特·菲茨杰拉德；成功

Abstract

F. Scott. Fitzgerald was one of the most representative American novelists of the 1920s. He was not only a leading participant in the typically frivolous, carefree, moneymaking life of the decade but also a detached observer of it. The Great Gatsby (1925) is regarded by many critics as one of the finest twentieth- century American novels. T. S. Eliot called it “the first step the American novel has taken since Henry James.” The Great Gatsby is a general critique of the American dream. American culture is characterized by a strong emphasis on the goal of monetary success and a weak emphasis on the importance of the legitimate means for the pursuit of success.

This thesis analyzes the roots of the disillusionment of Gatsby’s dream from the historical and authorial perspectives, By exploring the origins and essential nature of Gatsby’s dream, the naivety and innocence in the personality and the cruelty of Jazz Age society epitomized by the ruthless and immoral Buchanan, the paper draws the conclusion that a combination of these elements defines Gatsby’s failure and destruction in the end. Theme discussion in this paper is basically done through history and character analysis, which aims for better understanding of those connotations of the novel.

Key words: The Great Gatsby, F. Scott. Fitzgerald, success

Contents

Abstract in Chinese ...................................................................................................... I Abstract ........................................................................................................................ II

1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1

1.1 The Synopsis of F. Scott. Fitzgerald ................................................................. 1

1.2 Social and Historical Background of The Great Gatsby .................................. 1

2. Formation of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby ...................................... 2

2.1 The American Dream ........................................................................................ 2

2.2The American Dream of Gatsby ........................................................................ 4

3. Reasons for Gatsby’s Shattered American Dream ............................................... 6

3.1 Gatsby’s Pursuit of Pure Love .......................................................................... 6

3.2 Social Conflicts Due to Different Economic Status ......................................... 6

4. Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 8

References ................................................................................................................... 10

Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... 11

1. Introduction

1.1 The synopsis of F. Scott. Fitzgerald

F. Scott. Fitzgerald was one of the novelists of the 1920s. He was not only an active, leading participant in the typically frivolous, moneymaking life of the decade, but also a detached, profound observer of it at the same time. His own life was a mirror of the times. He led a priceless life and achieved much during the “Roaring Twenties”, drinking hard whisky, driving fast cars, and taking much delight in it.

F. Scott. Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor Francis Scott Key, the author of The Star-Spangled Banner. Fitzgerald was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Though an intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Despite being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end.

Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama. There he met and 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. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him.

1.2 Social and historical background of The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby (1925) is regarded by many critics as one of the finest twentieth- century American novels. T. S. Eliot called it “the first step the American novel has taken since Henry James.” However, the immediate response to the novel was overwhelmingly negative. It was not until 1950s that The Great Gatsby became popular all over the world. It took a long time for the greatness of The Great Gatsby to emerge. The Great Gatsby is a general critique of the American dream. American culture is characterized by a strong emphasis on the goal of monetary success and a

weak emphasis on the importance of the legitimate means for the pursuit of success. By combining the traditional biographical and historical approaches, and the approach of cultural criticism, the thesis tries to re- explore the significance of the American dream. In Introduction, the thesis briefly introduces Fitzgerald’s life, works and the social, historical context in which The Great Gatsby was created. Chapter One gives a reflection of the American dream, focusing on the sacred tradition and the secular tradition which have contributed to the early formation of the American dream in terms of religion, economy and politics. Chapter Two analyzes the development of Gatsby’s American dream by dwelling on Benjamin Franklin’s and Dan Cody’ influence on James Gatz respectively, Chapter Three expounds on the withering of the American dream through the analysis of the characterization of the protagonist-Gatsby, Meyer Wolfsheim, Daisy Fay and Tom Buchanan. Gatsby and Tom represent the two major forces in American society: idealism and materialism. Gatsby becomes a victim of the new commercial culture where material success is dominating. In Conclusion, the thesis argues that The Great Gatsby is about the predicament of human beings in general, thus it is necessary for man to figure out ways to minimize the contradictions between man’s social development and the world of nature, materialistic abundance and spiritual pursuit, idealism and reality.

2. Formation of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby

2.1 The American Dream

The American Dream as a special product of the American civilizations, begins to take shape at the starting point of the American civilization when the first European Puritan settlers came to the new world in the early seventeenth century. Therefore, some of the American Puritan religious and moral concepts have gone into the making of the following three essential qualities of the American Dream.

First, the American Dream adopts a positive attitude towards material success and considers it as all important expression of self-fulfillment. That explains the reason why material success is what one most likely first thinks of when it comes to

了不起的盖茨比英文介绍篇五
《美国文学之《了不起的盖茨比》中英文PPT》

了不起的盖茨比英文介绍篇六
《了不起的盖茨比经典句子中英文》

菲茨杰拉德的《了不起的盖茨比》，摘录书中比较经典的句子：

Chapter 1

1. 每当你觉得想要批评什么人的时候，你切要记着，这个世界上的人并非都具备你禀有的条件。

Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.

2.人们的善恶感一生下来就有差异。

A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.

3.人们的品行有的好像建筑在坚硬的岩石上，有的好像建筑在泥沼里，不过超过一定的限度，我就不在乎它建在什么之上了。

Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on.

Chapter 2

这时，天色已经暗了下来，我们这排高高地俯瞰着城市的灯火通明的窗户，一定让街头偶尔抬头眺望的人感到了，人类的秘密也有其一份在这里吧，我也是这样的一个过路人，举头望着诧异着。我既在事内又在事外，几杯永无枯竭的五彩纷呈的生活所吸引，同时又被其排斥着。

Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

Chapter 3

1. 他理解体谅地笑了——这笑比理解和体谅有更多的含义。这是那种不多见的使你忐忑不安的情绪能很快地平静下来的笑，这种笑容人的一生中顶多能碰上四五次。它 先是再一刹那间面对——或者说似乎在面对——整个外部世界，然后他就全副心神地倾注到你的身上，对你充满一种不可抵御的偏爱之情。它对你的理解恰是你想被 人理解的那么多，它对你的信任恰像你平时愿意对自己所信任到的那种程度，它叫你确信它对你的印象恰是你所希望造成的那么多。

He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, which you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

2.每个人都认为他自己至少具有一种主要的美德，我的美德是：我是我所结识过的少有的几个诚实人中间的一个。

Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people I have ever known.

Chapter 4

世界上只有被追求者和追求者，忙碌者和疲惫者。

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

Chapter 5

他怀着一种创造性的情感将自己全身心地投入到它的中间，不断地为它增添内容，用飘浮到他路上的每一根漂亮羽毛去装扮它。有谁知道在一个人的波诡云谲的心里，能蓄下多少火一样的激情和新鲜的念头。

He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

Chapter 6

他是上帝之子，如果这个词还有什么别的含义的话，这里只能用它的本意，他要为天父的事业而献身，服务于这一博大而又粗俗、浮华而又美丽的事业。

He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.

Chapter 7

许多种情感鱼贯似地流露到她的脸上，仿佛正被冲洗着的相纸一点一点地显示出物景那样。 So 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.

Chapter 8

1.我整夜没睡；雾笛声一个劲儿在桑德海湾上凄恻地鸣响，我辗转反侧，像生了病一样，理不清哪些是狰狞的现实，哪些是可怕的梦魇。

I couldn’t sleep all night; a fog-horn was groaning incessantly on the Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage, frightening dreams.

2.她消逝在了她那奢华的房子里，消逝在了她那富裕充实的生活之中，留给盖茨比的——只是无有。

She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby—nothing.

3.盖茨比比以前任何时候都深切地感受到了财富所能赐予青春的魅力和它所能持有的神秘，感受到了锦衣靓饰的清新怡人，意识到了像银子似的发着熠熠光彩的黛西，安然傲倨于劳苦人为生活所做的拼死斗争之上。

Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.

4.从这话里，除了能窥测出他对这一无法衡量出的情事之紧张的思考程度，还能推断出什么呢？

What could you make of that, except to suspect some intensity in his conception of the affair that couldn’t be measured?

5. 如果这一情况真实的话，他那时一定感觉到了他已失去了他原来的那个温馨世界，感觉到了他为这么长时间只活在一个梦里所付出的高昂代价。他那时一定举头望过 令人恐怖的叶片，看到了一个陌生的天宇，他一定不由得颤栗了，当他发现玫瑰原来长得是那么的奇形怪状，照在疏疏落落的草叶上的阳光是那么粗鄙。这是一个没 有真实的物的新世界，在那里可怜的鬼魂们四处随风飘荡，他们像呼吸空气那样吮吸着梦幻。

If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . .

Chapter 9

1.我三十岁了，如果我再年轻五岁的话，我说不定会自己欺骗自己把这称之为美德的。 I’m thirty. I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor.

2. 月光渐渐升高，显得渺小的房屋开始融入这溶溶的月色中去，此时我的眼前逐渐浮现出这座古老的岛屿当年在荷兰航海者眼中的那种妖娆风姿——一个新世界的翠绿 欲滴胸膛。它那现在不复存在的林木（为修造盖茨比住过的这座别墅被砍伐掉了）曾经温馨地煽起人类最后的也是最伟大的梦想；在那短暂的神奇时刻里，人类一定 在这片大陆前屏住了呼吸，情不自禁地耽入到他既不理解也没希冀过的美的享受之中，在历史上最后一次面对面地欣赏着，这一与他的感受惊奇的力量相称的景观。

And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

3.他经过慢慢追索才来到了这片蓝色的草地上，他的梦想一定已经离得他如此之近以至于他几乎不会抓不到它了。他不知道他的梦想已经被甩在了他的身后，已经隐藏在了城市以外的冥蒙之中，在那里共和国的黑暗的土地在黑夜中延伸着……

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.

4.为此，我们将顶住那不停地退回到过去的潮头奋力向前。

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

了不起的盖茨比英文介绍篇七
《了不起的盖茨比分析-英文论文》

James (Yang Zhen)

ENGL1601-B02

Professor: Hargrave

Oct 10th 2009

Pursuing the Forbidden love

In the novel The Great Gatsby and the film The English Patient, both those two

protagonists were pursuing their ideal love, pursuing the forbidden fruit. Gatsby thought that Daisy loved him so much and she didn‟t love her husband Tom at all and if he could get a great deal of money, he could join the upper class‟s life and then Daisy would leave her

husband for him. Meanwhile, another protagonist Almasy thought he could build a love that transcended nationality, ethnicity and even everything. He could give up everything to pursue his ideal love, that forbidden fruit. But both of their thoughts were too idealistic, simple and naive. The cruel reality and concrete specific historic period and social environment would not make their dream come true. In my points of view, the huge gap between their ideal love and the cruel reality would make it a certainty that their pursuing for the forbidden love would become a tragedy and their tragedy could be a warning for us.

Jay Gatsby was a son of shiftless and unsuccessful farm people in the middle west of USA. When he joined the army, he met Daisy, a beautiful woman from the upper class, and fell in love with her. Then, he took apart in the war and five years later when he came back from the Europe, Daisy had got married with a rich boy Tom. Later, Gatsby began his pursuing for forbidden fruit: a love to woman who had a husband. And Almasy, a Hungarian-born historian, follow the explorer Madox to do some research in the Sahara desert and met

Geoffrey Clifton and his wife Katharine Clifton. Katharine‟s charm and flair deeply attracted Almasy. He fell in love with her and began to pursuing his forbidden fruit. Both Gatsby and Almasy believe that they could get the forbidden love they wanted and pursued. But actually, we can find that their pursuing loses contact with the harsh reality was doomed to fail.

During the period of pursuing the forbidden love, Gatsby‟s ideal about the society and Daisy went far beyond the real ones. From the novel, we can find that he looked Daisy as the embodiment of beauty, purity and nobility and he thought that being together with her is like the being at wonderland which represented all the beautiful things which actually went far beyond Daisy herself. “The colossal vitality of his illusion had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way” (Fitzgerald, P95). More seriously, he also believed that money could help him eliminate the diversity between the upper class and him and buy the past and the love of Daisy. But actually, he was wrong. Like anyone else in that period, as a reality mortal, Daisy wanted not only the life of spirit and love, but also the stability of material life and superiority and immobility of social status. Under the influence of harsh realities, Daisy became more pragmatic. She had refused to leave Tom for five years probably because she had realized some kind of truth from life: the lack of emotion could be patient; paying little attention to emotion could at least provoke less hurt feelings and compared to it, the material enjoyment should play a very crucial role as she was born in a wealthy family. So when she found Gatsby„s money came from illegal way, she wavered because she thought that although Gatsby had a great deal of money, he was only a upstart;

being together with him may hurt her social status and when she had to choose one between Gatsby, a man who loved her so much and would devote his whole emotion and energy to her, and Tom, a man who betrayed her but had a stable social status, she choose the latter. Because she was a typical bourgeois woman who love money and value power with which only Tom could provide and she need more about the material comforts and superiority of social status. Even after the accident happened when Gatsby would like to be responsible to Daisy‟s mistake, Daisy frankly sat face to face with Tom and would sacrifice him anytime and then escape.

Meanwhile, what I would like to talk is that the process of Gatsby‟s pursuing the forbidden love to Daisy was also the process of his pursuing for his American dream, because in his mind, Daisy was like a flower: beauty and purity and she could also be the symbol of all the virtue of the upper class. Gatsby did also have an active but naive American dream; he thought the life of the upper class was full of beauty and glory of love and he could join them through personal struggle. Seen from Gatsby‟s “SCHUDULE” and “GENERAL RESOLVES” (Fitzgerald, P173), we can find that Gatsby was a man who was bright and had great ability and strong enterprise; he believe that he could get fortune through personal struggle and then change his social status. But that the American society was not the pure American dream any more: since 1820s, as the rapid development of capitalism, monopoly-capitalist group had gradually controlled the national economic arteries and every parts of the social life, a normal people could hardly get the chance to earn a great deal of money and join the upper class; meanwhile, as the writer said: that period called “Jazz Age”, is the most voluptuous and gorgeous period in American history; the youth in that time

blindly pursued the enjoyment, aspired after money and were infatuated with wine and sex, so Gatsby‟s ideal would be inconsistent with the society, even after he got a great deal of money, he still could not eliminate the diversity between the upper class and him and still could not join them. In my points of view, Gatsby was a representation of idealism which loses the contact with the harsh reality and Tom was representation of the extremely selfish realism. The process of pursuing the love to Daisy could also be the competition between the idealism who respected spirit and realism who respected the benefits. Although Tom show up the humanity of blackness and obduracy, but he was accepted by the American mainstream society because that society did not advocate personal struggle any more and began to cult the hedonism and extravagance and waste. Meanwhile, Daisy was also the product of that kind of society: pompous, self-serving and shallow. The fundamental diversity of value made Gatsby‟s tragedy. Gatsby, a man who confounded with the dream and the reality, spent his whole life and whole energy to build a mirage, a beautiful world of dream. He realized that “Daisy‟s voice was full of money” (Fitzgerald, P120) but he never understood that they belonged to the different world, standed for different value. So his devotion of his whole life energy and pure emotion to pursue the forbidden love to Daisy was doomed to fail. It is the huge gap between Gatsby‟s ideal life and cruel reality made it a certainty that Gatsby‟s pursuing would be a tragedy.

Meanwhile, the English patient‟s protagonist also had the same problem with Gatsby. He was a Hungarian but rejected all the national identity, choosing to shed “the clothes of country. He pursued the freedom: the freedom of love and freedom of everything. After he fell in love with Katharine, passion and obsession overwhelmed him, causing him block out

the outside world and its rules of right and wrong. He sometimes admitted that he and Katharine are "sinners in a holy city."(The English Patient), but he also believed that love could transcend everything: including nationality, morality and responsibility so he did not ever show his remorse over their deception or betrayal of Geoffrey. Meanwhile, Katharine also showed the lack of regret for hurting her husband. However, I think they were also selfish and unrealistic. Firstly, there was a serious conflict between their pursuing for the forbidden love and Katharine‟s husband, a man, who was hurt seriously due to that forbidden love. Almasy considered only about possessing Katharine, and did not consider Geoffrey‟s feeling: he did not consider what Geoffrey would do after the forbidden love happened. But latter, Geoffrey drove a plane to hit him and wanted to die with him and Katharine. Although Almasy was OK, Katharine was hurt seriously. Another serious conflict happened during his pursuing of the forbidden love was between his ideal, love is the most important thing, it could transcend everything, there is no need to have any national identity in the desert, and concrete specific situation-the cruel world war. In wartime, however, national identity is of great importance. With a casual attitude towards national allegiances, he went to ask the British for help because he thought they would help him undoubtedly. But actually, they didn‟t help him and even arrested him as a war criminal. Because as we can know, in the war, people especially the army would not help the people from the adversary state and even wanted to kill them as soon as possible. Although later, he found Katharine through providing the map of Northern Africa to German army to exchange the oil, she had already died. In sum, we can get a conclusion that Almasy‟s belief of pursuing the love for Katharine also went far away from the harsh

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