英语毕业论文之基于作品人物浅析菲茨杰拉德.doc

攀枝花学院本科毕业论文

基于作品人物浅析菲茨杰拉德

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Elementary Analysis on Fitzgerald
Based on the Characters of
The Great Gatsby

Contents

Abstract…………………………………………………………………….……….…I
Key Words…………………………...……………………………………...…….…... I
摘要……………………………………………………………………………...……..…...…..Ⅱ
关键词……………………………………………………………………………………..….... Ⅱ
Introduction……………………………………………………………………...….…1
Ⅰ.The Social and Family Background of Fitzgerald…………………………….……3
A. The Family Background of Fitzgerald …………………………………….……3
B. The Social Background of Fitzgerald …………………………………..………5
Ⅱ.The Early Days of Fitzgerald and the Appearance of Gatsby….……….…………7
A. The Early Days of Fitzgerald……………………………………………..…..…7
B. The Appearance of Gatsby….……………………………………….…..…..8
Ⅲ.The Golden Age of Fitzgerald and the Prime Time of Gatsby …………………….9
Ⅳ.The Death of Gatsby and the Down of Fitzgerald…………………….………..…12
A. The Death of Gatsby….….…………………………………………...……..12
B. The Down of Fitzgerald…………………………………………….………….13
Ⅴ.The Final End of the Legend……………………………………….…………..…14
Conclusion……………………………………………………………….…….……15
Notes……………………………………………………………….…….……..….16
Bibliography………………………………………….…………………...….….…..17
Acknowledgements……………………………………...…………….……….…..18

Abstract

At the time of his death, Fitzgerald was considered as a failed literary hope, a writer victimized by his own indulgences. But since 1940s his literary reputation has steadily risen. Today he is judged to be one of the major American prose writers of this century. In a number of his short stories, and in his finest novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald had revealed the stridency of an age of glittering innocence. In vivid and graceful prose he had, at the same time, described the emptiness and nothingness of American worship of wealth and the unending American dream of love, splendor, and fulfilled desires.
This paper focuses on the study of the similarities between Fitzgerald and Gatsby on the basis of the novel, The Great Gatsby, which consists of several parts as follows:
the first part gives the brief introduction, in which the early days of Fitzgerald and the appearance of Gatsby are introduced. From the ways Fitzgerald used to get the success and the classic posture Gatsby owned in the darkness, we get to know that they are waiting for something which is the symbol of the wealth and the social position.
The second part focuses on the detailed analysis of the similarities between Fitzgerald and Gatsby, which includes their occupation, the way they pursue their top girl, the ways they love and cherish their top girl, and the way to face the cruel and false society, from the analysis we learn that both of them possess an enthusiastic illusion for romantic love with innocence and naiveness.
The last parts makes a conclusion of the paper based on the elementary analysis of the novel, and, in that way we get to know the idea of the paper that the character of the novel-Gatsby is the embodiment of the author-Fitzgerald.

Key Words

Fitzgerald；Gatsby；similarities；

摘　要

文学界认为他的去世是因为对文学失去了希望。认为菲茨杰拉德是一个因自我放纵而遭受伤害的作家，40 年代以后他的文学地位日益上升。现在，菲茨杰拉德被认为是二十世纪美国主要的散文作家之一。在菲茨杰拉德的大量短篇故事中，还有他最好的小说《了不起的盖茨比》中，菲茨杰拉德揭示了美国20年代外表闪耀着天真的时代，而其中又有着刺耳的喧嚣。菲茨杰拉德用生动优雅的散文揭露了美国拜金主义的空虚，表现了美国人对爱情，豪华生活和无休止的欲望的无止境的追求。
在论文的第一部分的叙述中，我们从菲茨杰拉德的早期的经历可以知道：金钱，成功和社会地位对他早年生活，求学和参军起着不可磨灭的作用。并且与盖茨比的职业，走私客，相比也说明了在当时社会中流行的“无须流汗便可成功”已成为当时社会的一个主题，也说明了金钱，成功和社会地位的重要性。在第二部分中，菲茨杰拉德的追求珊尔达的过程中和盖茨比追求黛西的过程，还有他们对待他们所爱的女孩的方式和两个女人的寄生方式更充分的说明了金钱，成功和社会地位的重要性，也说明了在菲茨杰拉德的思想里也有对“无须流汗便可成功“的渴求。最后一部分，以菲茨杰拉德的落魄和盖茨比的死的悲剧来做结，也说明了当时的美国梦的枯萎。

关键词

菲茨杰拉德；盖茨比；相似性

Introduction

Since 1940s , the novel The Great Gatsby and the author Fitzgerald have become the focus of the writers and critics, and they paid much attention to them separately, and however, few of them researched the novel and the author together. What’s more, few of people studied the author from the perspective of the main characters of the novel, especially from the perspective of the character of Gatsby, for this, the aim of this paper is to prove: the main character of the novel, Gatsby, is the copy of the author, by comparing the similarities and the differences between Gatsby and Fitzgerald.
Some authors said that one classic masterpiece could display the social background of the author lived in. The novel The Great Gatsby is a miniature of 1920s America, and it redisplayed the process of a group of people trying their best to get the success what they wanted to, with the abnormal mind given by the failed society. So, from the research of the author we could get to know the particular times in which the author lived and get the evidence to prove the notion that Gatsby is the real copy of Fitzgerald.
This novel is a summary of the "roaring twenties"
, and a devastating exposition of the "Jazz Age"
. Through the narration of Nick Caraway, it explores the superficially glittering world of mansions on the Long Island shore, and his encounter with Jay Gatsby and the mystery that surrounds him.
The poet E.A Robinson (Alan Shucard, 1968: 146) once defined life in America as "a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks." While the author just use this bewildered situation as his novel's background to display the real history of the 20s America. And he also used the special situation to create the basic theme: the combination of absurdity with tragedy, and of potential power with perversion of potential and waste power. Like the other writers of the1920's, Fitzgerald was fascinated by the great of what had so-called "The American Dream." For a long time, The Great Gatsby was classified as "a book about the Roaring Twenties". It is one of those novels that so richly evoke the texture of their time that they become, in the fullness of time, more than literary classics, they become a supplementary or even substitute form of history. In some way, The Great Gatsby has a good source for historians because of Fitzgerald's sense of time, of the emotions evoked by the special time he has lived in the 1920's of America. At the same time, the novel was the real copy of the author's life. That is to say, the novel was the autobiography of the Author-Fitzgerald. Unlike the other writers of his contemporaries, he saw in himself exactly those aspects of “The American Dream”
 which had caused its degradation, otherwise the rest of writers formed two main streams: retreated from America, or attempted to objectify it through a broad-scope sociological analysis, or ridiculed it through parody.
The novel's main themes are: the problem of wealth and the problem of love, say ,the way of dealing with the true love and the love in the allusion which has always confused the youth. In the novel, these problems are along with the process of the development of the plot the author designed. In the novel, Fitzgerald's preoccupation with the money, and the dreams, the magical expectations, the carelessness, the ideals, and the illusions which create and created by wealth were certainly a very personal matter for him as an individual. While what he got: the delicate, lovely, and essentially parasitic woman whose love, loyalty had to be acquired by the success and protected by the continued achievement, in some way, love itself really like one kind of stock investment which depends upon the permanent investment of emotional funds.
  Furthermore, the eternal theme of the novel even all the novels--love. This also was not a exception, the real life's copy, nay, the love-affair between the author and the so-called golden girl Zelda completely occurred in the novel with another name: The so-called great Gatsby and the vast, vulgar, meretricious beauty-Daisy whose voices are always full of money, and this theme occurred in every corner of the novel. And we learn from the novel that the whole idea is the unfairness of a poor man cannot able to marry the woman he loved without money.
In a word, the novel The Great Gatsby was a historical document of 1920’s America. And in the novel, each character has been rendered perfectly in that particular historical background.

Ⅰ.The Family and Social Background of Fitzgerald

From the novel we’ve learnt that the family and the social background have played important parts in the character development of Fitzgerald since his school times which determine his later development. It can also be learnt that the family background, especially his father affects his development; in the meantime the social background have constituted the exterior factors in stimulating his pursuit of American Dream.

A. The Family Background of Fitzgerald
The dominant influences on F. Scott Fitzgerald were aspiration, literature, Princeton, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, and alcohol.
Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th Century. The self-styled spokesman of the "Lost Generation"
-- the Americans born in the 1890s who came of age during World War I -- crafted five novels and dozens of short stories that treat themes of youth, despair, and age with remarkable emotional honesty. His heroes -- handsome, confident, and doomed -- blaze brilliantly before exploding ("Show me a hero," he once said, "and I will write you a tragedy"), (John W. Bicknell, 1969: 36 )and his heroines are beautiful and intricate.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896, the namesake and second cousin three times removed of the author of the National Anthem. Fitzgerald's given names indicate his parents' pride in his father's ancestry. His father, Edward, was from Maryland, with an allegiance to the Old South and its values. Fitzgerald's mother, Mary (Mollie) McQuillan, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul. Both were Catholics.
Comparing with Fitzgerald’s career as a writer, Gatsby as a bootlegger, but they have many things in common; from the character of Gatsby we can learn it. Gatsby, whose main features include naive, pure and ambitious. In fact, he is the son of idealism or in some way he is the disciple of the style of thought of idealism, in his blood even in his cell are full of that style, which results in the way of choosing his life company. Gatsby, from a poor man to a rich man, whose experiences are so rich, while whose felling or the way of thought with ration are so tender and blindly, for going in for a woman who even has nothing in common with him. When we think it with mind, we really wonder that whether Gatsby is clever or not, or whether his life is successful or sorrowful, and we also want to know that if this story is suitable for that special historical background, because of his fantastic way to go on his stage or the wealth he got in that times. A man can get so much wealth in that special times is a powerful prove to show that he is not a man with nuts in his head. And he should know that the wealth he got is not achieved by the luck, however, by the hard effort and his wisdom. If that story really happened in that times, the only reason to explain that is the courage the youth in 1920’s
American youth has. And Fitzgerald also has that features: whose main features include naive, pure and ambitious. In fact, he is the son of idealism or in some way he is the disciple of the style of thought of idealism, in his blood even in his cell are full of that style, which results in the way of choosing his life company.
At the same time, Fitzgerald, to be a nobleman as a writer at that time, he didn’t show any discrimination to Gatsby, as a bootlegger, it showed that he had received the idea: you could get the success with the way you think it suitable for you. That way of thought showed that the traditional American morality also is his feature as Nick held. The narrator of the novel, Nick, represents the traditional moral standard of America. Nick, who was attracted by the beauty, the wealth, and the earthy life style of “the waste land”, however, he gradually comes to understand the true aspect of the waste land: essential emptiness, the gaudy display of nothingness
“During 1911-1913 he attended the Newman School, a Catholic prep school in New Jersey, where he met Father Sigourney Fay, who encouraged his ambitions for personal distinction and achievement. As a member of the Princeton Class of 1917, Fitzgerald neglected his studies for his literary apprenticeship. He wrote the scripts and lyrics for the Princeton Triangle Club musicals and was a contributor to the Princeton Tiger humor magazine and the Nassau Literary Magazine. His college friends included Edmund Wilson and John Peale Bishop. On academic probation and unlikely to graduate, Fitzgerald joined the army in 1917 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry. Convinced that he would die in the war, he rapidly wrote a novel, "The Romantic Egotist"; the letter of rejection from Charles Scribner's Sons praised the novel's originality and asked that it be resubmitted when revised. “(John W. Bicknell, 1969:10)

B. The Social Background of Fitzgerald
In June 1918 Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan, near Montgomery, Alabama. There he fell in love with a celebrated belle, eighteen-year-old Zelda Sayre, the youngest daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge. The romance intensified Fitzgerald's hopes for the success of his novel, but after revision it was rejected by Scribner’s for a second time. The war ended just before he was to be sent overseas; after his discharge in 1919 he went to New York City to seek his fortune in order to marry. Unwilling to wait while Fitzgerald succeeded in the advertisement business and unwilling to live on his small salary, Zelda broke their engagement.
That situation also occurred in the novel, only the female protagonist changed Daisy, the delicate, lovely, and essentially parasitic woman whose love, loyalty had to be acquired by the success and protected by the continued achievement. Without her presence, without her special love for money, without her false feeling to Gatsby, without her selfishness, the novel cannot show its charm and magic power to catch the critics and the contemporary writers. What’s more, the novel cannot get the promotion of the readers of today. In short, Daisy is in love less with Gatsby the man, than with the Gatsby’s successful image, in some way, she falls in love with the money of Gatsby, just like Gatsby makes his famous remark to Nick before they moved to the New York:”her voice is full of money”(F.Scott Fitzgerald, 1925 :144). At the same time, her first marriage with Tom also aimed at: money and social position.
And in the mind of Fitzgerald, he also appreciates the cool gir