英语论文了不起的盖茨比中的男性形象英文

毕 业 设 计（论文）题 目On the Male Characters in The Great Gatsby评析了不起的盖茨比中的男性形象专 业 英 语 学生姓名 学 号 0233326 指导教师 2006年4月29日ContentsAbstract3摘要31. Introduction42. Male Characters American Dreams62.1. The Tragic Hero Gatsby62.2. The Dramatic Narrator Nick72.3. The Ugly Upper-class Tom83. The Relationship between the Male Characters and Daisy 93.1. Gatsby and Daisys Sweetheart Relationship103.2. Nick and Daisys Relative Relationship113.3. Tom and Daisys Conjugal Relationship114. The Relationship between the Male Characters and Fitzgerald 124.1. Gatsby and Fitzgerald134.2. Nick and Fitzgerald144.3. Tom and Fitzgerald155. Conclusion 16 Bibliography17AbstractThe Great Gatsby is one of the greatest novels in Modern American literature. It is a highly symbolic meditation on the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess. On the one hand, Fitzgerald shows a running theme of how the American Dream affects all of the characters in The Great Gatsby, especially the major male characters, Gatsby, Nick and Tom. He also uses the distinctive writing style to introduce the three major male characters. On the other hand, according to Fitzgeralds personality and experience, the three male characters are generally considered being written autobiographically reflecting the different sides of the authors characters, which attracts readers to some extent.Key words: American Dream, Daisy Buchanan, Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby摘 要了不起的盖茨比是美国现代文学史上最优秀的作品之一。它反思了一个空前繁荣、物质过剩时代的美国梦的破灭，展现了美国梦对人们日常生活的消极影响，尤其是对男性人物（盖茨比、尼克、汤姆）的影响上。尽管他们对自己的生活都充满了雄伟的抱负，但变质了的美国梦却粉碎了他们的梦想。此外，菲茨杰拉德还运用独特的手法描述了这三个特殊的男性人物；通过对这三个人物与菲茨杰拉德的对照可以看出：作者从某种程度上说是在讲述自己的经历，盖茨比、尼克、汤姆实际上是作家个性特点三个不同侧面的反映，这也是小说之所以成功的魅力所在。关键词: 美国梦；黛西布坎南；菲茨杰拉德；了不起的盖茨比ON THE MALE CHARACTERSIN THE GREAT GATSBY1. Introduction Reading Fitzgeralds works, we can hunt for many literary values from them. People gradually pay more attention to Fitzgeralds masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. Some articles about The Great Gatsby have been published, such as American Dream and Character Symbolization in the Novel The Great Gatsby Chen Mei, Jin Yue. Journal of Qiqihar University (Phi & Soc Sci), September. 2003.,On Nick Carraways Dual Roles in The Great Gatsby Du Yong-xin. Joural of Sichuan International Studies University, Jan . , 2001.,Gatsby: Another Fitzgerald Xie Jiashum. Joural of Tangshang Polytechnic College, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2000.,etc. These articles are both odds and ends, not integrated. So, the aim of this article is to perfectly introduce the three male characters (Gatsby, Nick and Tom). And as we known, only having enough comprehension of the author and his life, the article can be grasped clearly.Though Mark Twain and William Dean Howells thought that America would become the hope of the world, F. Scott Fitzgerald gradually found that this new world was all disaster. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived in the midst of the “roaring twenties” and was part of it all-driving fast cars, drinking hard whisky, and taking an immense delight in it, was perceptive enough to understand that America was “a moon that never roses.” And as much as he enjoyed the “roaring” of the post-war boom years, he foresaw its doom and failure. Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul. He attended a private school in New Jersey, then Princeton University. Academic difficulties forced him out of Princeton midway through his junior year; he returned the following fall but left college permanently in 1917 to join the army, as World War I neared its end. While stationed in Montgomery, Alabama, 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. And 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. In 1922 he published his second novel, The Beautiful and Damned and a collection of short stories, Tales of the Jazz Age. In 1925 Fitzgerald managed to complete his masterpiece: The Great Gatsby. His next novel, Tender Is the Night (1934) was received coldly mainly because America was deep in the Great Depression and nobody wanted to read about expatriates in France. Battered by the failure of the book and Zeldas mental breakdowns, he drank to excess and grew seriously ill, died in 1940.Fitzgerald is a famous American modern writer and is called “spokesman in the Jazz Age”. And his greatness lies in the fact that he found intuitively in his personal experience the embodiment of the nation and created a myth out of American life. The story of The Great Gatsby is a good illustration. T. S. Eliot read The Great Gatsby three times and concluded that it was “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James.” T. S. Eliot. Letter to Scott Fitzgerald . New York: New York Press, 1925.The main theme of The Great Gatsby meditates on 1920s American 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. The Great Gatsby shows a running theme of how the American dream affects all of the characters: they each have their own aspiration for their own life, but, ironically, their aspiration is only revolved around wealth, and the core of their life is to enjoy happiness from money. And, Daisy, the only heroine, who relates with the other characters, has a perfect vantage point in the story- she is Gatsbys lover, Nicks cousin, Toms wife, and all three are closely linked because of her. Besides, The Great Gatsby is also an autobiographical novel. Fitzgerald combines his experience with the male characters, such as Gatsby, Nick and Tom showing his own experience, life and dream.2. The Male Characters American DreamThe Great Gatsby is a novel that illustrates the society in the 1920s and the associated beliefs, values and dreams of the American people at that time. These beliefs, values and dreams can be summed up be what is termed the “American Dream”: a dream of money, wealth, prosperity and the happiness that supposedly came with the booming economy and get-rich-quick schemes that formed the essential underworld of American upper-class society. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates the American Dream and the “foul dust” or the carelessness of a society that floats in the wake of this dream. According to the characters respective expectation, it can be seen that the American Dream is not confined to one social class or type of person, but to the whole nation, everyone.2.1. The Tragic Hero GatsbyIn the novel, Gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything on his dream, not realizing that his dream is unworthy of him. To Gatsby, his dream is of spiritual reunion with Daisy, but his prior dream is wealth. He thinks that wealth can solve all his problems: time, Daisy, and love. “Cant repeat the past? he cried incredulously. Why of course you can!Im going to fix everything just the way it was before, he said , nodding determinedly. Shell see.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 148) In the novel, Gatsby uses the most lavish party, sumptuous mansion, and gorgeous machine to impress Daisy. And the green light, situated at the end of Daisys East Egg dock, represents Gatsbys hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy. “If it wasnt for the mist we could see your home across the bay, said Gatsby. You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 125)In fact, the green light stands for the achievements achieved by Gatsby to some extent. It leads Gatsby to go after the future, the glorious phantasm in his ideal world, not only the love for Daisy. However, Gatsby dream is bound to fail. On the one hand, he acquires immense wealth through criminal activities, for instance, bootlegging. “He and this Wolfsheim go and sold grain alcohol over the counter. ” (Fitzgerald 2004: 179) This is the opposite idea of the American Dream, which states that only the good, virtuous and hard working are rewarded. On the other hand, he held an unrealistic view of life and how he could recreate the past. His dreams has distorted in the reality, when his rationality realizes that the image of life and of Daisy does not coincide with the real life version. The devastating end of his dream is the finish of The Great Gatsby. Just as Fitzgerald sees the American dream crumbling in the 1920s, American powerful optimism, vitality, and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth.2.2. The Dramatic Narrator NickNick Carraway is a pragmatic man, who comes from the Middle West. He has distinctive temperament and value standard. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world havent had the advantages that youve had.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 1) He is also a sober, intellect and reflective one and makes the objective judgment and evaluation to the major characters. His final choice reflects the authors moral orientation. In The Great Gatsby, he does not share the American dream. But still he is striving for something, and he wants to be himself, as he sees himself, tolerant, objective and reliable. The money of the upper class is just a tiny bit of his dream together with his admiration for the rich East Eggers. Mainly, his dream consists of mental values, of a pursuit of honesty. He praise highly of himself: “I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 80). “Thats my Middle West the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty darkI see now that this has a story of the West, after all Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly un adaptable to Eastern life.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 235)The above sentences show that Nick realizes for the first time that though his story is set on the East Coast, the western character of his acquaintances (“some deficiency in common”) is the source of the storys tensions and attitudes. He considers each characters behavior and value choices as a reaction to the wealth-obsessed culture of New York. This perspective contributes powerfully to Nicks decision to leave the East Coast and return to Middle West in search of a less morally ambiguous environment. Though he gives up the opportunity to become rich, he scrupulously abides by his moral criterion.2.3. The Ugly Upper-class TomWhilst Toms interpretation of the American dream does involve money, it is not his prime concern as it is with many of the other characters. His dream also concentrates on power gained through the prestige that is associated with property. “His family were enormously wealthbut now hed left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away; for instance, hed brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest” (Fitzgerald 2004: 8) His self-confidence and utter belief in his superiority are an example of how he thinks about himself in relation to all other people, especially to the low-class man, Wilson. He uses his social status and physical strength to dominate those around him. For example, he subtly taunts Wilson while having an affair with his wife, experiences on guilt for his immoral behavior, and does not hesitate to lash out violently in order to preserve his authority over Myrtle in Chapter 2. He is so desperately an empty man that he consider himself as exterior belongings. He is trying to find his identity by looking for happiness in nice cars (it is a ridiculous yellow luxury vehicle), money and a good woman.Toms dream of power and superiority leads to his moral decline by ruining his marriage with Daisy and ultimately her wishes of having a truly happy marriage. Not only does his lack of morals affect Daisy and her happiness, it also fosters the situation of Gatsbys and Georges death. “I told him the truth, he said. He came to the door while we were getting ready to leave, He was crazy enough to kill me if I hadnt told him who owned the car. He broke off defiantly. What if I did tell him? That fellow had it coming to him. He threw dust into your eyes just like he did in Daisys, but he was a tough one. .” (Fitzgerald 2004: 239)Tom is the ultimate example of how the effect of the American dream caused the society to change their morals and exhibit action that is detrimental to society in general.3. The Relationship Between the Male Characters and Daisy BuchananDaisy Buchanan is a round (In fact, according to the novels introduction, Zelda, the Fitzgeralds wife, is the model of Daisy.) and dynamic character with many different sides in her personality. Early in the book, she is described as a sweet and innocent young woman. She grows up as “the most popular of all the young girls in Louisville.”(Fitzgerald 2004:100) But, as the story develops, Daisy becomes shallow, bored, and sardonic. She is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. So, when a wealthy, powerful young man named Tom asks her to marry him, Daisy decides not to wait for Gatsby. At the same time, the hearty love is far away from her. She is somewhat cynical and behaves superficially to mask her pain at her husbands constant infidelity and does not take care of her daughter. And the social standard of American femininity in the 1920s that she conforms to makes her avoid such tension-filled issues as her undying love for Gatsby. 3.1. Gatsby and Daisys Sweetheart RelationshipIn Gatsbys eyes, Daisy is his American Dream. Gatsby has made Daisy a symbol of everything he values. In order to be reunited with Daisy, he holds the lavish weekly party to draw Daisys attention and gets help from Nick. Chapter 5 is the pivotal chapter of The Great Gatsby, as Gatsbys reunion with Daisy is the hinge on which the novel swings. Gatsbys character throughout his meeting with Daisy is the purest and most revealing, so is Daisy. “Daisys face was smeared with tears, But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room. Im glad, Jay.” Her throat, full of aching, grieving beauty, told only of her unexpected joy. (Fitzgerald 2004: 119)Gatsbys love to Daisy is loyal, however, Daisys love to Gatsby is still doubtful. Gatsby blinds himself to realizing that Daisy would never desert her own class background to be with him. In Chapter 7, Gatsbys obsession with recovering in a blissful past compels him to order Daisy to tell Tom that she has never loved him. He needs to know that she has always loved him, that she has always been emotionally loyal to him. But he is defeated, and his dream has been broken totally. Daisy finally chooses Tom.And, sympathetically, Gatsby decides to revenge Daisy in order to demonstrate the deep love. But, as Nick writes, Gatsby must have already realized that “what a grotesque thing a rose is.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 216) Though the rose has been a conventional symbol of beauty throughout centuries of poetry, Nick suggests that roses arent inherently beautiful, and that people only view them that way because they choose to do so. Daisy is “grotesque” in the same way: Gatsby has invented her with beauty and meaning by making her the object of his dream. Had Gatsby not imbued her with such value, Daisy would be simply an idle, bored, rich young woman with no particular moral strength or loyalty.3.2. Nick and Daisys Relative RelationshipThough as Daisys cousin, Nick is not familiar with her until he moves to the East. The first impression to Nick, Daisy is a sweet and innocent young woman. “Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, exciting things just a while since and there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 13) So, when Nick knows that Tom has an extramarital affair with Myrtle, and Gatsby loves sincerely with Daisy, he assists the resurgent love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. But, as the further contact with Daisy, Nick gradually finds that Daisy is beautiful and charming, but also fickle, shallow, bored, sardonic and non-sustained loyalty love. She is indifferent to her infant daughter. So, compared with Gatsby, Nick has a far clearer understanding of Daisy. And, he has predicted that Gatsby dream will be dashed to the ground.In the other hand, there are some major similarities existing in the two relatives. They both play with another persons heart. Nick fools with Jordan and Daisy fools with Gatsby. Also they are both with the deception and lying throughout the novel.3.3. Tom and Daisys Conjugal RelationshipTom, maybe, is Daisys real lover. Though Daisy feels sweet with Gatsbys unrealistic love, she acquires much safer and happier with Toms reliable love, especially with Toms social status and physical strength. “I saw them in Santa Barbara when they came back and I thought Id never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a minute shed look around uneasily, and say Wheres Tom gone? and wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the door.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 103) And also in Chapter 7, Gatsby asks Daisy to tell Tom that Daisy never loves him, but Daisy finds that her real thought: even if she was alone with Gatsby, she couldnt say she never loved Tom, and what she said wouldnt be true. Though Tom has a lover outside, he still loves Daisy and doesnt want to divorce with Daisy. “Whereve you been? he demanded eagerly. Daisys furious because you havent called up” (Fitzgerald 2004: 99) It demonstrates that Tom cares about Daisys feeling and wants to share her unhappiness. And the same circumstance has happened in Chapter 2. “Its really his wife thats keeping them apart. Shes a Catholic, and they dont believe in divorce. Daisy was not a Catholic, and it was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.” (Fitzgerald 2004: 45) It indicates that Tom totally doesnt plan to marry to Myrtle and also forbids Myrtle to insult Daisy. And when Tom learns of Daisys love affair with Gatsby, he is very angry and tries his best to separate them by finding out the source of Gatsbys income.Though his method is very unsportsmanlike, he protects Daisy and recovers her love. Daisy and Toms love is mutual, which makes Daisy feel safe. They tighten them together superficially by marriage or even practically by love. 4. The Relationship Between the Male Characters and FitzgeraldIn the 1920s, the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. The chaos and violence of World War I left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought in the war turned to be wild and extravagant. The staid conservatism and timeworn valu