论《了不起的盖茨比》中的象征主义-On-Symbolism-in-The-Great-Gatsby英语论文.doc

本科生毕业论文（设计）册

学院 XXX学院
专业 英语教育
班级 XXXX英语教育1班
学生 XX
指导教师 XXX

XXXX大学本科毕业论文（设计）任务书
编 号：
论文（设计）题目：On Symbolism in The Great Gatsby
学院： XXX学院 专业： 英语教育 班级： XXX英语教育1班
学生姓名： XXX 学号： XXXX 指导教师： XXX 职称：教授

1、 论文（设计）研究目标及主要任务
本论文的研究目标是探讨象征主义在《了不起的盖茨比》中的应用。其主要任务是通过分析具有象征意义的意象来更深刻的理解小说的主题。

2、论文（设计）的主要内容
本论文分为三章，第一章分析具有象征意义的事物，第二章分析具有象征意义的颜色，最后一章分析具有象征意义的人物。

3、论文（设计）的基础条件及研究路线
本论文的基础条件是不同的文学家及评论家对菲茨杰拉德及其作品《了不起的盖茨比》的研究结果。
研究路线是对小说中的象征主义从不同的类别进行详细、系统的分析，并将其与小说主题相结合以更深刻的理解小说。

4、主要参考文献
Fitzgerald. F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 2007.
Miller, James. F. Scott Fitzgerald: His Art and His Technique. New York: University Press, 1964.
李希.论《了不起的盖茨比》中的色彩描写在刻画人物的中的作用.外国义学研究, 2002.
吴建国. 菲茨杰拉德研究. 上海外语教育出版社, 2002.

5、计划进度

阶段
起止日期
1
确定初步论文题目
3月16日前
2
与导师见面，确定大致范围，填开题报告和任务书，导师签字
3月16日-3月23日
3
提交论文提纲
3月23日-3月30日
4
交初稿和文献综述
3月30日-4月20日
5
交终稿和评议书
5月8日前
指 导 教师： 年 月 日
教研室主任： 年 月
注：一式三份，学院（系）、指导教师、学生各一份
XXXX大学本科生毕业论文（设计）开题报告书
XXX 学院 英语教育 专业 XXXX 届
学生
姓名
XX
论文（设计）题目
On Symbolism in The Great Gatsby
指导
教师
XXX
专业
职称
教授
所属教研室
高年级教研室
研究方向
英美文学

课题论证：从具有象征意义的事物、颜色、人物等方面论证《了不起的盖茨比》中的象征主义。

方案设计：第一章分析具有象征意义的事物，
第二章分析具有象征意义的颜色，
第三章分析具有象征意义的人物。

进度计划：3月16日前确定初步论文题目
3月23日前写开题报告、任务书
3月30日前提交论文提纲
4月20日前提交初稿和文献综述
5月8日前交终稿和评议书
指导教师意见：

指导教师签名： 年 月 日
教研室意见：

教研室主任签名： 年 月 日
XXXX大学本科生毕业论文（设计）评议书
姓 名
XX
学院
XXX学院
专业
英语教育
年级（班）
XXX英语教育1班
论 文 题 目
On Symbolism in The Great Gatsby
完成时间
XXXX/5/8
论

文

内

容

摘

要

《了不起的盖茨比》是菲兹杰拉德的著作，被普遍认为是美国最杰出小说之一，在美国文学史上占有重要地位。这篇小说就思想和写作手法而言都可堪称是一部完美之作。菲兹杰拉德精湛的艺术手法和风格简直无懈可击，在象征手法的使用上更是取得很大成功。此篇论文则正是尝试着对小说中的象征手法进行详细，系统的分析。象征主义是很重要的文学技巧，可极大地有助于刻画人物及揭露主题，因此常被作者们使用。菲兹杰拉德就用了一系列的象征精确的刻画了20世纪20年代物质主义潮流下人类道德的堕落，也深入的阐明了咆哮的爵士时代下美国梦的注定幻灭。这篇论文，通过结合人物和主题等来详细分析作品中的象征主义。在文中主要从具有象征意义的事物，颜色，人物三大类别来分析，每类分别包含了小说中那些重要的象征意象。

指
导
教
师
评
语

年 月 日
指 导 教 师

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初评成绩

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答辩记录：

记录人签字： 年 月 日
答辩小组意见：

组长签字： 年 月 日
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评定成绩： 签章

年 月 日
XXXX大学本科生毕业论文（设计）文献综述
Literature Review
As a famous classic novel, The Great Gatsby has aroused wide attention and fervent discussion with a great diversity of critical perspectives applied to analyze it since its publication. T. S. Eliot praises it to be "the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James." And Richard Culler comments that "The Great Gatsby has become so much a fact of American literature，so much a permanent presence, a persistent influence that it is almost impossible to imagine contemporary American fiction without Jay Gatsby. No other figure in our literature has become so eponymous". Robert Ornstein also speaks highly of it by remarking that "Fitzgerald did create a myth with the imagination sweep of America's historical adventure across an untamed continent". Chang Yaoxin, a famous Chinese professor also thinks that "Fitzgerald found intuitively, in his personal experience, the embodiment of that of the nation and created a myth out of American life".
Of course, there are also some disapproving opinions on the novel. For instance, H.L. Mencken criticizes the hero Gatsby in the novel thinking that he is too disputable to be a literary protagonist. Many other critics also hold disagreeable perspectives on both Fitzgerald and Gatsby’s life style of "self-indulgence" and Fitzgerald’s commercial intention which leads to a complete ruin of his writing talents. Baumgarten also comments the novel that "it was dropped from the modern library because I failed to sell". While all in all, the favorable views exceed those opposed ones and its profound significance can not be neglected.
For so many years, lots of critics from different fields have made enormous studies on this novel and come to their own distinct conclusions by focusing on different aspects. A majority of the critics deal with the analysis of the novel’s themes, practically the theme of American dream. Maybe a very early influential study on the novel is Marius Bewley's Scott Fitzgerald's Criticism of America. It is a significant review article mainly dealing with the novel from the point of the American experience and the American Dream. Marius Bewley says that," The Great Gatsby is an exploration of the American dream as it exits in a corruption period....the essence of the American dream whose tragedy Gatsby is enacting is that it lives in a past and a future that never exists, and is helpless in the present that does". Mary Jo Tate also thinks that the novel's significance lies in its quest of the American dream. Robert Ornstein takes this novel for a drama which depicts the corruption of American Dream in a collapsed society. In China, there are also many critics paying attention to the same theme in the novel. For example, Diao Keli remarks that the theme of it is the pursuit of American dream and the desertion of American dream. Wang Yujuan also makes a comment that the dream of Gatsby is also the dream of all typical Americans, while the defeat of Gatsby is in fact also the loss of all Americans. Zhang Lilong, as a Chinese celebrated scholar of American literature, says that The Great Gatsby is actually a recall and summary of the changing process of the American Dream.
Besides the American Dream, the themes involving love, money, materialism are also discussed. Many articles concentrate on its themes. The example can be displayed by the collection of critical essays about Scott Fitzgerald: The Promise of Life compiled by Robert Lee including Roger Lewis's Money, Love and Aspiration in The Great Gatsby and Susan Resneck Pan's The Idea of Order at West Egg which indicates the themes through the text. The comprehensive analysis of these themes about the novel has offered helpful foundation for many critical discussions.
What is more, many other sides about the novel including its structure, language style, narrative techniques are also explored. Susan Resneck Parr commends Fitzgerald for his delicate structure with paying attention to every detail and creatively linking the past and the current life together. George Garrett celebrates the novel’s peculiar dialogues and monologues in his Fire and Freshness: A Matter of Style. The unique narrative techniques are also drawn attention, especially the narrative point of view. David Seed thinks highly of this technique for the presentation of Nick Carraway who plays an important part in presenting and judging every characters and everything.
Then reviewers also conduct a study of the novel from .feminist perspective. L.A. Field has a deep discussion about the sex in the novel and analyses it from feminist point of view. P.G. Slater also argues against the former attitudes towards Daisy who is traditionally thought to be a material and hollow lady. Meanwhile, others explore Gatsby from psychological point of view. Afterwards, some new critical theories and methods including post-modernism, new historicism, and cultural criticism are employed to study the novel. The outstanding critics in this field are B. Brecht and M. Bakhtin. Myth-archetypal criticism is also applied to the novel by analyzing the archetypal motifs in order to tell the myths and hidden archetypes of the novel. Moreover, the Western Marxist Criticism is adopted to analyze the novel by many people. Professor Dong Hengxun suggests that it is beneficial to analyze Fitzgerald and his works from Western Marxist perspectives. But the conclusion drawn from this perspective is more likely to associate with politics.
Another obbligato analysis of the novel is symbolism perfectly employed in the novel by Fitzgerald. As a matter of matter, symbols such as the valley of ashes, Dr. T. J. Eckleburg's eyes, Gatsby’s mansion, the colors of green, yellow, white, and some actions, closes are discussed frequently by the researchers. But many of the symbolic analysis are not all-inclusive and separate from other aspects. So in this thesis, the intention is to have a systematic exploration of symbolism in the novel by analyzing the most representative symbols in detail as well as associating them with the themes of the novel thus having a further track of the corrupt American dream and the immortal society in the Jazz Age.

本科生毕业论文设计

题目：论《了不起的盖茨比》中的象征主义

作者姓名： XX
指导教师： XXX
所在学院： XXX学院
专业（系）： 英语教育
班级（届）： XXX届

完成日期 XXXX 年 5 月 8 日

On Symbolism in The Great Gatsby

BY
Chen Wei
Prof XXXX, Tutor

A Thesis Submitted to Department of English
Language and Literature in Partial
Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of B.A. in English
At XXXXUniversity

May 8th, XXX

Abstract

The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott. Fitzgerald is generally considered as one of the most excellent American novels occupying an important position in American literature. It can be taken as a perfect work either in terms of ideas or writing techniques. Fitzgerald’s exquisite artistic techniques and style are unexceptionable, especially his successful employment of symbolism. This thesis just attempts to make a detailed and systematic analysis of symbolism used in the novel. Symbolism is such a valuable literary technique which can provide a great help in depicting characters and revealing themes that it is frequently adopted by writers. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald just uses a series of symbolic images to have an accurate description on human beings’ moral decadence under the circumstance of materialism being the main trend of the society in the 1920s and to have a deep illustration on the inevitable corruption of American dream in the roaring Jazz Age. So in this thesis, symbolism will be analyzed in detail by associating with related characters and themes. On the whole, three large categories of symbols including objects, colors and characters are discussed and each category respectively consists of some most important images with symbolic meanings in the novel.

Key words symbol American dream corruption

摘要

《了不起的盖茨比》是菲兹杰拉德的著作，被普遍认为是美国最杰出小说之一，在美国文学史上占有重要地位。这篇小说就思想和写作手法而言都可堪称是一部完美之作。菲兹杰拉德精湛的艺术手法和风格简直无懈可击，在象征手法的使用上更是取得很大成功。此篇论文则正是尝试着对小说中的象征手法进行详细，系统的分析。象征主义是很重要的文学技巧，可极大地有助于刻画人物及揭露主题，因此常被作者们使用。菲兹杰拉德就用了一系列的象征精确的刻画了20世纪20年代物质主义潮流下人类道德的堕落，也深入的阐明了咆哮的爵士时代下美国梦的注定幻灭。这篇论文，通过结合人物和主题等来详细分析作品中的象征主义。在文中主要从具有象征意义的事物，颜色，人物三大类别来分析，每类分别包含了小说中那些重要的象征意象。

关键词 象征 美国梦 衰败

Table of Contents

Abstract…………………………………………………………………….iii
Abstract in Chinese………………………………………………………...iv
Introduction………………………………………………………………..1
Chapter I. Objects with symbolic meanings …………………………….5
A. Symbol of the Green Light…………………………………………...5
B. Symbol of the West Egg and East Egg……………………………….6
C. Symbol of the Valley of Ashes………………………………………..7
D. Symbol of the Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg………………………..9
E. Symbol of the Car…………………………………………………….10
Chapter II. Colors with symbolic meanings ……………………………..12
A. Symbol of the White………………………………………………….12
B. Symbol of the Black…………………………………………………..13
C. Symbol of the Yellow…………………………………………………13
D. Symbol of the Blue……………………………………………………14
E. Symbol of the Grey……………………………………………………14
Chapter III. Characters with symbolic meanings ………………………..15
A. Symbol of Daisy………………………………………………………15
B. Symbol of Gatsby……………………………………………………..16
C. Symbol of Tom………………………………………………………..17
D. Symbol of Nick……………………………………………………….18
Conclusion ……………………………………………………………….....19
Notes ………………………………………………………………...............21
Bibliography ………..……………………………………………………....22

13

Introduction

F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the greatest American novelists. Many scholars think that he is the third greatest modern American novelist, only next to Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Fitzgerald’s life is relatively short but carries a kind of epic glory. He dose have some defects, while which can not surpass his merits, so he still can be regarded as a hero of his particular age. Although his writing career is only about 20 years, he has created four classic novels and more than 160 brilliant short stories thus making him a distinguished novelist in the 20th century. He struggles indefatigably all his life in order to achieve his American dream and of course during the struggling process, there are setbacks and helplessness, success and failure. Most characters created by him in the novels are also the post-war youth pursuing the American dream, so these characters have a close link with him in terms of life experience and spirit. His success and failure are dramatically displayed in his works which meanwhile condense concretely a whole generation’s happiness and sorrow. As he reproduces accurately and vividly the American society and the broken American dream in the 1920s, he is taken as a representative of the "lost generation", a writer laureate in 1920s, an excellent chronicler, and a spokesman of the rip-roaring Jazz Age by his contemporary and later ones.
In American history, the Jazz Age refers to the period from the end of World War I (1918) to the Great Depression (1929). After World War I, the United States enters a transient phase of unprecedented prosperity with economic boom and material affluence. This decade is considered as the most libertine and florid era in American history. However, at the same time, people particularly the young generation strongly feels disoriented and lost in the Jazz Age under the circumstance which is described by people as the god is dead, the war has ended, and all beliefs completely collapse. The society is filled with moral depravity and the young are at sea. They no longer believe in god and traditional ethics, while the new values have not taken shape, so they only trust in their own feelings, and they also fully enjoy the luxury life brought by the postwar economic prosperity. In this age, people are spiritual emptiness but dream to become a millionaire overnight and the pursuit of material satisfaction as well as the carpe diem becomes the social fashion. Consequently, the young generation just abandons the traditional morals