美国梦(american-dream)外文翻译.doc

美国梦
美国梦（American Dream）源于英国对美国的殖民时期，发展于19世纪，是一种相信只要在美国经过努力不懈的奋斗便能获得更好生活的理想，亦即人们必须透过自己的工作勤奋、勇气、创意、和决心迈向繁荣，而非依赖于特定的社会阶级和他人的援助。通常这代表了人们在经济上的成功或是企业家的精神。1931年James Truslow Adams 在其作品《“美国梦”的定义》中这样写到：“不论社会阶层还是出身背景，每个人都应该有机会凭借其能力和取得的成就获得更好、更富裕、更充实的生活。”“美国梦”这一信念根植于《独立宣言》。该宣言称，“人人生来平等”, “造物主赋予他们某些不可剥夺的权利,包括“生命安全、自由和追求幸福的权利。”
1. 我们继续奋力向前划，逆水行舟，不停地倒退，回到往昔。
2. “每逢你想要对别人品头论足的时候，”他对我说，“要记住，世上并非所有的人，都有你那样的优越条件。”
3.个人决心：不要浪费时间去Shafter家或者（名字，字迹不清）不再吸烟或嚼烟 每隔一天洗澡 每周读一本有益的书或杂志 每周存5块3块钱 对父母好.
小说人物
尼克（旁白）：来自中西部，耶鲁大学毕业，保险销售员，一战退伍老兵，住在西卵，是盖茨比的隔壁邻居。
杰伊 盖茨比(原名詹姆士 盖兹)——一个年轻的、神秘的百万富翁后来被揭穿是个私酒走私者,原来住在北达科塔州,有着不为人知的从商经历。当他还是一战中一名年轻小军官的时候就已经认识了黛西，并且深深地爱上了她。
Daisy-年轻而充满女性魅力和吸引力，但是十分肤浅。尼克的第二个表妹,曾经搬走了,与盖茨比分手后成为富家子弟汤姆布坎农的妻子。通常人们认为黛西这一角色的灵感来自菲茨杰拉德年轻时与芝加哥Ginevra王的女继承人的浪漫情史。
汤姆布坎农-生活在东卵的百万富翁, 黛西的丈夫。布坎南和威廉·米切尔有着相似处,Chicagoan Ginevra嫁给了国王。布坎南和米切尔对马球有兴趣”。像菲茨杰拉德憎恨的Ginevra的父亲一样 ,布坎农也曾就读耶鲁大学，是一名白人至上主义者。
乔丹 贝克-她是黛西长期的朋友,一个职业高尔夫球手，但名声不是很好。菲茨杰拉德告诉麦克斯韦帕金斯，乔丹贝克是根据Ginevra King的一个朋友，同时也是高尔夫球手伊迪丝卡明斯来塑造的。
威尔逊-一名机械工人，一家汽车修理店的老板。
莫特尔 威尔逊-威尔逊不安分的妻子，同时是汤姆布坎农的情人。
《了不起的盖茨比》（The Great Gatsby），出版于1925年，是美国作家佛兰西斯·史考特·基·费兹杰罗所写的一部以20世纪20年代的纽约市及长岛为背景的短篇小说，被视为美国文学“爵士时代”的象征。
菲茨杰拉德
在二十多年的创作生涯中，菲茨杰拉德发表了《了不起的盖茨比》、《夜色温柔》和《最后一个巨头》等长篇小说，以及一百六十多篇短篇小说。其中1925年出版的《了不起的盖茨比》是菲茨杰拉德写作生涯的顶点。这部小说人木三分地刻画了财富和成功掩盖下的未被满足的欲望，反映了20年代“美国梦”的破灭，深刻地揭示了角色性格的矛盾和内心的冲突，同时也淋漓尽致地展现了菲茨杰拉德杰出的才华和写作技巧。《了不起的盖茨比》被誉为当代最出色的美国小说之一，确立了菲茨杰拉德在文学史上的地位。
人物生平
弗兰西斯·司各特·菲茨杰拉德于1896年9月24日出生在美国明尼苏达州圣保罗市一个商人家庭。他在中学时代就对写作产生了兴趣，在普林斯顿大学学习期间也热衷于为学校的刊物和剧社写稿，1917年辍学入伍后，更在军营中开始了长篇小说的创作。1918年，在亚拉巴马的蒙哥马利附近驻扎期间，菲茨杰拉德爱上了18岁的南方少女泽尔达·赛尔，对以写作来获得成功有了比以往更强烈的渴望。退伍后，他继续坚持写作，终于在1920年发表了第一部长篇小说《天堂的这一边》。
《天堂的这一边》的出版让不到24岁的菲茨杰拉德一夜之间成为了美国文坛一颗耀眼的新星。一个星期后，他与泽尔达在纽约结了婚。菲茨杰拉德和泽尔达年轻，迷人，拥有金钱和名望，是一对令人艳羡的金童玉女。他们活跃于纽约的社交界，纵情地享受爱情、年轻的生命以及成功的欢乐，过着夜夜笙歌、觥筹交错的生活，后来又长年在欧洲居住。但由于讲究排场，挥霍无度，他们的生活渐渐捉襟见肘。泽尔达因精神病多次发作被送进精神病院，菲茨杰拉德也染上了酗酒的恶习。1940年12月21日，菲茨杰拉德因为心脏病突发死于洛杉矶，年仅44岁。
在二十多年的创作生涯中，菲茨杰拉德发表了《了不起的盖茨比》、《夜色温柔》和《最后一个巨头》等长篇小说，以及一百六十多篇短篇小说。其中1925年出版的《了不起的盖茨比》是菲茨杰拉德写作生涯的顶点。这部小说人木三分地刻画了财富和成功掩盖下的未被满足的欲望，反映了20年代“美国梦”的破灭，深刻地揭示了角色性格的矛盾和内心的冲突，同时也淋漓尽致地展现了菲茨杰拉德杰出的才华和写作技巧。《了不起的盖茨比》被誉为当代最出色的美国小说之一，确立了菲茨杰拉德在文学史上的地位。
菲茨杰拉德创造力最旺盛的时期是美国历史上一个特殊的年代。第一次世界大战结束了(1918)，经济大萧条(1929)还没有到来，传统的清教徒道德已经土崩瓦解，享乐主义开始大行其道。用菲茨杰拉德自己的话来说，“这是一个奇迹的时代，一个艺术的时代，一个挥金如土的时代，也是一个充满嘲讽的时代。”菲茨杰拉德称这个时代为“爵士乐时代”，他自己也因此被称为爵士乐时代的“编年史家”和“桂冠诗人”。由于他本人也热情洋溢地投身到这个时代的灯红酒绿之中，他敏锐地感觉到了这个时代对浪漫的渴求，以及表面的奢华背后的空虚和无奈，并在他的作品中把这些情绪传神地反映出来。在他的笔下，那些出入高尔夫球场、乡村俱乐部和豪华宅第的上流社会的年轻人之间微妙的感情纠葛是一个永恒的主题，他们无法被金钱驱散的失意和惆怅更是无处不在。他的作品经常以年轻的渴望和理想主义为主题，因为他认为这是美国人的特征；他的作品又经常涉及感情的变幻无常和失落感，因为这是那个时代的人们无法逃遁的命运。
爵士乐时代
菲茨杰拉德创造力最旺盛的时期是美国历史上一个特殊的年代。第一次世界大战结束了(1918)，经济大萧条(1929)还没有到来，传统的清教徒道德已经土崩瓦解，享乐主义开始大行其道。用菲茨杰拉德自己的话来说，“这是一个奇迹的时代，一个艺术的时代，一个挥金如土的时代，也是一个充满嘲讽的时代。”菲茨杰拉德称这个时代为“爵士乐时代”（一般指一战以后，经济大萧条以前的约十年的时间），他自己也因此被称为爵士乐时代的“编年史家”和“桂冠诗人”。由于他本人也热情洋溢地投身到这个时代的灯红酒绿之中，他敏锐地感觉到了这个时代对浪漫的渴求，以及表面的奢华背后的空虚和无奈，并在他的作品中把这些情绪传神地反映出来。在他的笔下，那些出入高尔夫球场、乡村俱乐部和豪华宅第的上流社会的年轻人之间微妙的感情纠葛是一个永恒的主题，他们无法被金钱驱散的失意和惆怅更是无处不在。他的作品经常以年轻的渴望和理想主义为主题，因为他认为这是美国人的特征；他的作品又经常涉及感情的变幻无常和失落感，因为这是那个时代的人们无法逃遁的命运。
费茨杰拉德从小就极度虚荣，在赢得大量金钱之后，豪华的生活除了满足他的虚荣之外，更多地却是给他带来了烦恼和空虚。日复一日的饮酒及随之而来的悔恨和狡猾而又难堪的辩解。对娜尔达的一往情深，对婚姻始终如一的执著，以及伴随而来的妒忌、怨恨和争吵……
所有这些都体现出一种无可奈何的毁灭，时间和才华的浪费。他曾经梦想成为一位第一流的作家，想象自己成为商业伟才，然而这一切都毁于“日复一日，永远是深夜3点钟”，“除参加一个个晚会外，无所事事”的生活。无休止的欢闹和过量的酒精使他染上了肺结核。1940年12月21日，他因心脏病突发而过早地结束了他44岁的灼灼年华，留下了只写了6章的极有可能成为另一部辉煌巨著的《最后一个巨头》，成为文坛憾事。不知是娜尔达浪费了他的才华，还是他浪费了娜尔达的才华，他们既是一对爱侣，又是一对“冤家”。娜尔达最终因精神崩溃被送进了疯人院，凄惨地死去。
《了不起的盖茨比》的基本情节也属于同一个模式,菲茨杰拉德的天才却将一个并无多少罗曼蒂克色彩的“三角关系”点化成为一个独特的“了不起的”盖茨比灵魂受难的缠绵悱恻的悲剧。
“迷失的一代”繁荣时期
“迷惘的一代”不仅指参加过欧洲大战的作家，也包括没有参加过战争、但对前途感到迷悯和迟疑的20年代作家，例如司各特·菲茨杰拉尔德、托·斯·艾略特和托·马斯·沃尔夫等。“迷悯的一代”主要繁荣在20年代；30年代以后，他们的创作倾向，包括海明威在内，都有了变化。

The American Dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.[1] The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."[2]
1.（So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.）
2．"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
3.GENERAL RESOLVES No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable] No more smoking or chewing Bath every other day Read one improving book or magazine per week Save $5.00 $3.00 per week Be better to parents
Major characters
· Nick Carraway (narrator)—bond salesman from the Midwest, a Yale graduate, a World War I veteran, and a resident of West Egg. He is Gatsby's next-door neighbor.
· Jay Gatsby (originally James Gatz)—a young, mysterious millionaire later revealed to be a bootlegger, originally from North Dakota, with shady business connections and an obsessive love for Daisy Fay Buchanan, whom he had met when he was a young officer in World War I.
· Daisy Buchanan née Fay—an attractive and effervescent, if shallow, young woman; Nick's second cousin, once removed; and the wife of Tom Buchanan. Daisy is believed to have been inspired by Fitzgerald's own youthful romance with Chicago heiress Ginevra King.
· Tom Buchanan—millionaire who lives on East Egg, and Daisy's husband. Buchanan has parallels with William Mitchell, the Chicagoan who married Ginevra King. Buchanan and Mitchell were both Chicagoans with an interest in polo. Like Ginevra's father, whom Fitzgerald resented, Buchanan attended Yale and is a white supremacist.
Jordan Baker—She is Daisy Buchanan's long-time friend, a professional golfer with a slightly shady reputation. Fitzgerald told Maxwell Perkins that Jordan was based on the golfer Edith Cummings, a friend of Ginevra King George
B. Wilson—a mechanic and owner of a garage.
Myrtle Wilson—George Wilson's unstable wife and Tom Buchanan's mistress.
The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published in 1925, it is set on Long Island's North Shore and in New York City from spring to autumn of 1922.
The novel takes place following the First World War. American society enjoyed prosperity during the "roaring" 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol as mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers. After its republishing in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership and is today widely regarded as a paragon of the Great American Novel, and a literary classic. The Modern Library named it the second best novel of the 20th Century.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
(September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and his most famous, The Great Gatsby. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.
The Author’s Life and career
Born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota to an upper middle class Irish Catholic family, Fitzgerald was named after his famous second cousin, three times removed, Francis Scott Key, but was referred to as "Scott." He was also named after his deceased sister, Louise Scott, one of two sisters who died shortly before his birth. "Well, three months before I was born," he wrote as an adult, "my mother lost her other two children....I think I started then to be a writer." His parents were Mollie (Mc Quillan) and Edward Fitzgerald.
Scott spent the first decade of his childhood primarily in Buffalo, New York (1898–1901 and 1903–1908, with a short interlude in Syracuse, New York between January 1901 and September 1903). His parents, both practicing Catholics, sent Scott to two Catholic schools on the West Side of Buffalo, first Holy Angels Convent (1903–1904, now disused) and then Nardin Academy (1905–1908). His formative years in Buffalo revealed him to be a boy of unusual intelligence and drive with a keen early interest in literature, his doting mother ensuring that her son had all the advantages of an upper-middle-class upbringing. In a rather unconventional style of parenting, Scott attended Holy Angels with the peculiar arrangement that he go for only half a day—and was allowed to choose which half.
Fitzgerald had been an alcoholic since his college days, and became notorious during the 1920s for his extraordinarily heavy drinking, leaving him in poor health by the late 1930s. According to Zelda's biographer, Nancy Milford, Scott claimed that he had contracted tuberculosis, but Milford dismisses it as a pretext to cover his drinking problems. However, Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli contends that Fitzgerald did in fact have recurring tuberculosis and Nancy Milford reports that Fitzgerald biographer Arthur Mizener said that Scott suffered a mild attack of tuberculosis in 1919, and in 1929 he had "what proved to be a tubercular hemorrhage". It has been said that the hemorrhage was caused by bleeding from esophageal varices.
Fitzgerald suffered two heart attacks in late 1940. After the first, in Schwab's Drug Store, he was ordered by his doctor to avoid strenuous exertion. He moved in with Sheilah Graham, who lived in Hollywood on North Hayworth Ave., one block east of Fitzgerald's apartment on North Laurel Ave. Fitzgerald had two flights of stairs to climb to his apartment; Graham's was on the ground floor. On the night of December 20, 1940, Fitzgerald and Sheilah Graham attended the premiere of This Thing Called Love starring Melvyn Douglas and Rosalind Russell. As the two were leaving the Pantages Theater, Fitzgerald experienced a dizzy spell and had trouble leaving the theater; upset, he said to Ms. Graham, "They think I am drunk, don't they?"
The following day, as Fitzgerald ate a candy bar and made notes in his newly arrived Princeton Alumni Weekly, Ms. Graham saw him jump from his armchair, grab the mantelpiece, gasp, and fall to the floor. She ran to the manager of the building, Harry Culver, founder of Culver City. Upon entering the apartment and assisting Fitzgerald, he stated, "I'm afraid he's dead." Fitzgerald had died of a massive heart attack. His body was moved to the Pierce Brothers Mortuary.
Zelda and Scott's grave in Rockville, Maryland, inscribed with the final sentence of The Great Gatsby.
Among the attendants at a visitation held at a funeral home was Dorothy Parker, who reportedly cried and murmured "the poor son-of-a-bitch," a line from Jay Gatsby's funeral in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.His body was shipped to Baltimore, Maryland, where his funeral was attended by twenty or thirty people in Bethesda; among the attendants were his only child, Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith (then age 19), and his editor, Maxwell Perkins. Fitzgerald was originally buried in Rockville Union Cemetery. Zelda died in 1948, in a fire at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Frances "Scottie" Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith worked to overturn the Archdiocese of Baltimore's ruling that Fitzgerald died a non-practicing Catholic, so that he could be buried at the Roman Catholic Saint Mary's Cemetery where his father's family was interred. Both Scott's and Zelda's remains were moved to the family plot in Saint Mary's Cemetery, in Rockville, Maryland, in 1975.
Fitzgerald died before he could complete The Love of the Last Tycoon. His manuscript, which included extensive notes for the unwritten part of the novel's story, was edited by his friend, the literary critic Edmund Wilson, and published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon. In 1994 the book was reissued under the original title The Love of the Last Tycoon, which is now agreed to have been Fitzgerald's preferred title.
When Scott was ten years old, his father was fired from Procter & Gamble, and the family returned to Minnesota, where Fitzgerald attended St. Paul Academy in St. Paul from 1908–1911. His first literary effort, a detective story, was published in a school newspaper when he was 13. When he was 16, he was expelled from St. Paul Academy for neglecting his studies. He attended Newman School, a prep school in Hackensack, New Jersey, in 1911–1912, and entered Princeton University in 1913 as a member of the Class of 1917. There he became friends with future critics and writers Edmund Wilson (Class of 1916) and John Peale Bishop (Class of 1917), and wrote for the Princeton Triangle Club and the Princeton Tiger. His absorption in the Triangle—a kind of musical-comedy society—led to his submission of a novel to Charles Scribner's Sons where the editor praised the writing but ultimately rejected the book. He was a member of the University Cottage Club, which still displays Fitzgerald's desk and writing materials in its library. A poor student, Fitzgerald left Princeton to enlist in the US Army during World War I; however, the war ended shortly after Fitzgerald's enlistment
Novels such as The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night were made into films, and in 1958 his life from 1937–1940 was dramatized in Beloved Infidel.
“The Jazz Age”
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s, or the Roaring Twenties, from which jazz music and dance emerged with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has lived on in American pop culture for decades. With the introduction of jazz came an entirely new cultural movement in places like the United States, France and England. The birth of jazz music is often accredited to African Americans but expanded and modified to become socially acceptable to middle-class white Americans. White performers were used as a vehicle for the popularization of jazz music in America. Even though the jazz movement was taken over by the middle class white population, it facilitated the mesh of African American traditions and ideals with the white middle class society. Cities like New York and Chicago were cultural centers for jazz, and especially for African American artists. In urban areas, African American jazz was played on the radio more often than in the suburbs. 1920s youth used the influence of jazz to rebel against the traditional culture of previous generations. This youth rebellion of the 1920s went hand-in-hand with fads like bold fashion statements (flappers) and