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. 中原工学院毕 业 论 文毕业论文题目：The Disillusionment of the American DreamThe Social Significance of The Great Gatsby学生： 聂姿伊学 号： 1院（系）：外国语学院英语系专 业：英语班 级：2006级本科1班指导教师： 仝志敏指导教师职称： 讲师 起止时间： 2009年10月2010年5月（外国语学院制表）13 / 19The Disillusionment of the American DreamThe Social Significance of The Great GatsbyA Thesis SubmittedTo Foreign Languages DepartmentOf ZhongyuanUniversity of TechnologyIn Partial Fulfillment of the RequirementsFor the Degree of Bachelor of ArtsByNie ZiyiSupervisor：Professor Tong ZhiminMay, 2010SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ZhongyuanUniversity of TechnologyDeclaration of Academic IntegrityI promise that the thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any institutes of higher learning and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person, except when due reference is made in the text of the thesis. I understand that to do so would mean that I had committed plagiarism, and that it is my responsibility to be aware of the Universitys regulations on plagiarism and their importance.Signed: Date: The Disillusionment of the American DreamThe Social Significance of The Great GatsbyAbstract: The 1920s was a decade when the outline of contemporary America clearly formed. World War I created a new generation, the Lost Generation and a new time, the Jazz Agea time of profound cultural and social changes. American people had to make a choice between traditional values and new standards adopted by young people.In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as a time of decayed social and moral values.Cynicism, greed, and pursuit of pleasure became the symbols of this period. They changed the nature of the original American Dream and finally ruined it. The intention of this study is to explore the social significance reflected in the disillusionment of the American Dream through the comparison between the characters and events in the novel and the social reality and the diachronic analysis of the American dream.Keywords:social significance; the disillusionment of American Dream; the Jazz Age美国梦的破灭试析了不起的盖茨比所反映的社会意义摘要：二十世纪二十年代是当代美国社会初具雏形的年代。第一次世界大战造就了新的一代人迷惘的一代，爵士乐时代也由此拉开序幕。在这一时期，美国经历了深刻的文化与社会变革，美国人也必须在传统价值观和广为年轻人接受的新价值观之间做出选择。在了不起的盖茨比中，菲茨杰拉德刻画了这个以玩世不恭、贪图享乐为标志，社会和道德价值腐化堕落，美国梦的本质发生蜕变并最终破灭的年代。本文将小说中的人物和事件与社会现实进行比较，对美国梦做了历时性的分析，从而揭示小说所反映的社会意义美国梦的破灭。关键词：社会意义；美国梦的破灭；爵士乐时代Contents1 Introduction12A Panorama of American Society in The Great Gatsby22.1 Materialism22.2 Immorality32.3 Inequality43 The Fall of the American Dream Reflected in The Great Gatsby63.1The definition of the American Dream63.2The evolution of the American Dream73.3The disillusionment of the American Dream74Conclusion9References10Acknowledgements11The Disillusionment of the American DreamThe Social Significance of The Great Gatsby1 IntroductionThe Great Gatsby, a novel written by the American author F.ScottFitzgerald and first published in 1925, is a highly specific portrait of American society during the Roaring Twenties.The central character is Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night. The narrator, Nick Carraway, is Gatsbys neighbor in West Egg. After a reunion arranged by Nick, Gatsby and his love Daisy reestablish their connection and begin an affair.After a short time, Daisys husband Tom,though he himself is involved in an extramarital affair with Myrtle Wilson, is deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. Later, Gatsbys car has struck and killed Myrtle. Nick learns from Gatsby that it is Daisy who is driving the car when the accident happens, but Gatsby will take the blame.Myrtles husband George soon finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, and moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsbys life and for the emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. The above is a brief summary of the novel. Though it tells us astory taking place over only a few months in a small area in the vicinity of Long Island, The Great Gatsby is a panorama of the entire American society in the Jazz Age, and a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole. On the surface it is a thwarted love between a man and a woman, butactually it is a story of the distorted American Dream disillusioned in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess, in which lies this novels social significance.2 A Panorama of American Society in the Jazz AgeNo one can finish reading The Great Gatsby without being impressed by the opulent parties with wild jazz music that Gatsby throws every Saturday night. The novelis an epitome of the whole American society, showing us a vivid picture of the Jazz Age. The Jazz Age, referring to the period after the end of World War I, through the Roaring Twenties, ending with the onset of the Great Depression, is a time of profound cultural and social changes. American people are torn between traditional values and new standards adopted by young people. 2.1MaterialismMaterialism can be clearly seen from the life of Daisy and Gatsby. The former only loves material luxury and cares for nothing else, while the latter does not love material luxury itself but thinks large fortune will bring him love and happiness.Daisy is Nicks cousin, Toms wife, and the woman that Gatsby loves. She has promised to wait for Jay Gatsby until the end of the war, but after meeting Tom Buchanan and comparing his extreme wealth to Gatsbys poverty, she breaks her promise. Money, ease, and material luxury are what Daisy truly wants:“If Daisy really loved Gatsby as a poor young officer, it was because she was not so corrupted and sophisticated then. Even so, when she was faced with a choice between true love and money, she chose the latter.”(Xu, 1994)Gatsby is the protagonist of the novel. From Nicks narration, we know Gatsby is a mysterious and wealthy young man. Every Saturday, his huge Gothic mansion in West Egg serves as the site of extravagant parties. He has been pursuing fame and wealth all his life with an ideal which he thinks can be realized. To fulfill his dream of getting Daisy back,he earns money by bootlegging and other illegal means because he believes that money can buy him love and happiness. Materialism and money-worship pervaded in America during the 1920s. The people from various walks of life who attend Gatsbys parties show the greedy chase for wealth. Thequick 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 and people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. (Du, 2002) Instead of some noble values, the goal which people were struggling for had become material luxury. To make matters worse, the romantic idealism held by the American youth promoted their materialism. Car, house, beauty and so on, were symbols of their dream. They devote themselves into the pursuit of these things, of pleasure, excitement and novelty. No one can tell what on earth he was striving for, because everyone is striving for an unworthy illusion. “What they want is just living in dream, in illusion. But their dream is too far away from the reality and they are definite to fail, to lose.” (Zhang, Wang, 2002)2.2ImmoralityWe notice that World War I is the background of the story. It had great impact on Americans. During the war, men had fought against the enemy in faraway lands andwomen had aggressively entered the workforce. When the war was over, the survivors went home and tried to return to normalcy. Meanwhile, young women decided that they were not willing to waste away their young lives waiting idly for spinsterhood; they were going to enjoy life.However, the survivers were not able to do it. Instead, they became disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had faced made the social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The worse is that more and more people got involved in crime and illicit activities. In the novel, Gatsbys business associate, Meyer Wolfsheim, is a notorious figure standing for the underworld. He is involved in organized crime, and even responsible for fixing the 1919 World Series. He and Gatsbys illegal business gives evidence to the rise of crime and illicit activities in American society during the Roaring Twenties. Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld aiming to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.In the 1920s, the development of productive forces liberates women from the heavy burden of housework. The chances of taking jobs are better than ever, making them more independent and rebellious. Women want to live as they hope and they begin to behave against the old rules and morals;women seek for first-class citizenship and try to play more satisfying roles in the society; women especially the young wore short skirt, silk stockings, heavy make-up and short, bobbed hair, announcingtheir presence by their appearance, all as Daisys friend Jordan, an extremely cynical womangolfer with a masculine icy demeanor who cheated to win her first tournament does in the novel. Another example is Toms mistress Myrtle Wilson, an earthly, vital, and voluptuous woman who is desperate to improve her life. She shares a loveless marriage with George Wilson, a man who runs a shabby garage. She has been having a long-term affair with Tom, and is very jealous of his wife, Daisy. After a fight with her husband, she runs out into the street and is hit and killed by Gatsbys car.They were the so-called “flappers”. The flapper later became a popular model. “All over the country skirts rise, hair is shortened and traditional morals get loose.” (Zhang, Wang, 2002) Tom and Daisy are two typical people with loose morals. Daisy, a selfish woman, is nothing but a money-worshipper, which can be seen from her crying over Gatsbys piles of shirts. She only cares for herself and nobody else. So does Daisys husband, Tom, an egoist symbolizing the degenerated East. He is a brutal, hulking man who, like Daisy, comes from an immensely wealthy Midwestern family. He would never hesitate at all in doing anything for his own good at the expense of others. He is a hypocrite who lives by double standard: though he himself an extramarital affair with Myrtle, he is outraged by the relationship between Daisy and Gatsby. He asserts to Gatsby that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby will never understand, and announces to Daisy that Gatsby gains his fortune through illegal means. Tom and Daisys extreme selfishness can be reflected from Nicks following criticism:“Tom and Daisythey smashed up things and creature and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the messthey had made” (Fitzgerald, 1925)2.3 InequalityIn The Great Gatsby, inequality can be seen from two aspects: I) the gap between the established rich and the newly rich; II) the gap between the rich and the poor.First we discuss the former aspect. As the story goes on, we learn that Gatsbys real name is James Gatz. He was born to an impoverished farming family in North Dakota. When he is a young lieutenant in the army, Gatsby meets Daisy and falls in love with her. He lies about his background to Daisy, claiming to be from a wealthy family in order to convince her that he is worthy of her. Then he works briefly for a millionaire, and becomes acquainted with the people and customs of high society. Inspired by all these experiences above, later he devoted his life to acquiring huge fortune.Gatsby comes from the lower class and is in nature a kind, persistent, agreeable and innocent man as sharply contrasted to the selfish, careless and cruel Tom and Daisy. He corrupts himself in the quest of the corrupted Daisy because of his innocence. His fate turns out to be a tragedy because he is not conscious of the fact that he will never fill the gap between the two different classes:“He knew that Daisy was extraordinary, but he didnt realize just how extraordinary a nice girl could be. She vanished into her rich house, into her rich, full life, leaving Gatsby-nothing.” (Fitzgerald, 1925)Social discrimination still exists in the 1920s and the divisions among the classes cannot be overcome. There is no such a thing as equality, on which the American democracy bases. “In various unrevealed capacities he (Gatsby) had come in contact with such people, but always with indiscernible barbed wire between.” (Fitzgerald, 1925) After Gatsbys death, Daisy does not go to his funeral and she does not even send a message or a flower. Actually it is Gatsby who wins readers hearts. But he has never been accepted by the class that he so earnestly wants, nor won back the lost Daisy even at the expense of his life.Then let us come to the second aspect, the gap between the rich and the poor. In the story, George B. Wilson and Henry Gatz can be the representative of the poor. George is Myrtles husband, a listless, impoverished man whose only passion is his love for his wife. He is devastated by Myrtles affair with Tom. After her death, driven by his grief,George murders Jay Gatsby before committing suicide himself. Henry is Gatsbys father who tells Nick about his sons extravagant plans and dreams of self-improvement. His sons help is the only thing that saves him from poverty.During the Roaring Twenties, despite great economic success, wealth, power and privilege are not equalized. A few persons still monopolize the nations wealth and enjoy the delights of affluence, living in luxurious way, but millions of Americans still live in squalor with little prospect, no matter what they do, of improving their conditions. The decreasing unemployment,the rising general level of wages for workers, and some well-off farmers can shut out the picture of the othersthe tenant farmers, black and white, the immigrant families in the big cities either without work or not making enough to get the basic necessities.3 The Fall of the American DreamParticularly, tracing back the source of Gatsbys dream, we know it is a popular dream in America, what we call the “American Dream” today. Then let us explore deeper into the social reality reflected in The Great Gatsby to see the evolutionand the fall of the American Dream.3.1 The definition of American DreamJames Truslow Adams coined the phrase “American Dream” in his 1931 book Epic of America:“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” (Adams, 1931)He also wrote:“The American Dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.” (Adams, 1931)From Truslows words we know that the true spirit of the American Dream lies in the fullest development of man. However, as time passes, this spirit has been distorted.3.2 The evolution of the American DreamThe meaning of the “American Dream” has changed over the course of American history. “In the early years, the American Dream is Puritans desire for thefreedom in religion and creation. Along with the expansion to the West,the American Dream develops into the pursuit of happiness, especiallythe pursuit of success, including career, love and wealth. After the CivilWar, the American Dream becomes more popular and more concrete andit makes people believe that as long as he works hard, a poor boy canbecome a millionaire on this wonderful land which is full of opportunity. “(Gao.2008) When human history develops into the twentieth century, the American Dream becomes the main aim of Americans. But the nature of the American Dream has changed. In the novel, Gatsby has the typical American belief that he is a Son ofGod and is destined to pursue the gaudiness of life. Then hemeets Cody, an embodiment of success,who becomes a millionaire in the gold rush since the 1870s. Later, Gatsby keeps Codys portrait on his wall. It is clear that Gatsby takes Cody as hismodelin his later struggle for rising in the world.By telling the story of Jay Gatsby, a poor young American bedazzledwith the allure of wealth regardless of the way he achieves it, Fitzgeraldepitomizes the American Dream of early twentieth century-achievement as measured in possessions and position. That the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goalsultimately resulted in the corruption of the American Dream.3.3 The disillusionment of the American DreamThe Americans has believed that everyone has the same opportunity to make a fortune so long as he or she toils honestly. Its true that many of the early Americans achieve great success due to this belief, the great American Dream. BenjaminFranklin is a case in pointin American history.He not only achieved his success through hard work and persistence, but also won both wealth and respect from others. (Yao, 2002)In the novel, the poor Gatsby joinsWolfsheim in bootlegging and other illicitbut profitable activities after the war and begins to make every possible effort towards his dream. He starts from nothing, and soonmakes a lot of money. Now his dream seems to be true, but he earns all his money by illegal means instead of toiling honestly. “As we know, in the bourgeois society not everyone can make his fortune, only a few people can, and these people make their fortune by crushing others, or by some means of cruel and evil force or trickery.” (Yang, 1995)In Gatsbys quest of wealth, obviously the American Dream has deviated from its original way. If Codys success can be considered as the result of the good opportunity of gold rush, Gatsbys becoming rich overnight by illicitways is of an entirely different nature. Gatsby at most can becalled an upstart, and cannot gain others respect as Franklinonce did.As the novel progresses, 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 corrupts himself in the quest of the corrupted Daisy, and even though he does so, he has neither been recognized by the upper class nor by the ordinary people. “It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it,” said Truslow. (Truslow, 1931) These words show that American Dream has already degraded to an illusion among Americans, which can no longer gain peoples trust. Gatsby invests Daisy with an idealistic perfection that she cannot possibly attain in reality and pursues her with a passionate zeal
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