浅析《了不起的盖茨比》中盖茨比的爱情悲剧

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摘 要

本论文从盖茨比的爱情悲剧角度入手,介绍了盖茨比的爱情梦和文中他如何挽救自己爱情的一系列举动, 从社会因素和个人因素两方面分析了造成盖茨比爱情悲剧的根源。严格的社会等级制度,金钱至上,精神空虚的社会现象以及 盖茨比个人性格上的弱点等都造成了他爱情梦的破灭。最后,作者指出:对于盖茨比的爱情悲剧的分析也有着一定的现实意义,旨在使人们更好的解读小说,有助于人们在现代社会建立健康的价值观。

关键词：盖茨比的爱情悲剧；悲剧根源；现实意义

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

3. The Love Tragedy in The Great Gatsby 4

3.1 The Pursuit of Love 4

3.2 The Disillusionment of Gatsby’s Love……………………………….5

4. Analysis on the Causes of Gatsby’s Love Tragedy ...........................5

4.1 Naivety and Innocence in Gatsby’s Character 5

4.2 The Cruelty of the Upper-class People…………………………….....6

5. The Realistic Significance 7

5.1 Love and Money 7

5.2 Moral Lesson 8

6. Conclusion 9

Works Cited 11

1. Introduction

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald is one of the greatest American writers in 20^th century. He writes both full lengthy novels and short stories. The most famous work by him is The Great Gatsby. In his whole life, he is troubled by two things, including his talents and his fortune. He once owns all of them but later loses them all. After his death, critics all criticize his life to be a waste. In his whole life, he writes 4 full-lengthy novels and 150 short stories.

The Great Gatsby was published in 1925. It is a short-lengthy novel written by the American writer Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. It is regarded as the symbol of American literature in Jazz Age. First published by Scribner"s in April 1925, The Great Gatsby received mixed reviews and sold poorly; in its first year, the book sold only 20,000 copies. Fitzgerald died in 1940, believing himself a failure and his work forgotten. However, the novel experienced a revival during World War II, and became a part of American high school curricula and numerous stage and film adaptations in the following decades. The story mainly tells about a young and mysterious millionaire, Jay Gatsby, and his crazy and unrealistic pursuit for Daisy Fay Buchanan. This novel is regarded as Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. It discusses topics like lapse, idealism, obstacles of reformation, social changes and so on. It’s a deep description for the Jazz Age and the prosperous 20s and it’s also considered as an alert of American dream. Today, The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary classic and a contender for the title “Great American Novel”.

In this thesis, the writer is going to give an interpretation about the love tragedy in The Great Gatsby. The writer will divide this thesis into 6 parts. The first part is the introduction part. In this part, there is a brief introduction to the author and the book; also the writer will give a short narration on the main stories in this book. In the second part, it will be the literature review part. In this part, the writer will show the readers about previous studies on this book. The third part will be the love tragedy in The Great Gatsby. The writer will divide this into two sections, including his performance in pursuit of love and the disillusionment of love. In the fifth part, the thesis will give an interpretation on the love, money and moral. The sixth part is the conclusion part. The paper aims at making people understand this novel more deeply and contributing to build healthy values in today’s society.

2. Literature Review

Soon after The Great Gatsby was published, it was greatly praised not only for high achievements but also for its graceful and delicate prose style. T. S. Eliot concluded that it was “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James” (Chang Yaoxin, 2008:56). There was also criticism from some critics like Malcolm Cowley, Dennis Hardy, John Peale Bishop and Edmund Wilson, they sensed a new substance in Fitzgerald’s work.

There was some disapproval apparently. For example, H. L. Mencken attacked the novel and its chief character Gatsby for being too vague to be a disembodied shadow of a literary protagonist. There were also many critical reviews on both his wild lift of “self-indulgence” and his wasting of his talent on commercial writings. In 1939, Arthur Poupord said The Great Gatsby was dropped from the Modern Library because it failed to sell (Poupard and James, 1984:143).

However, after Fitzgerald’s death, Edmund Wilson’s book The Crack Up was published in 1945, it aroused people’s interest in Fitzgerald both as an individual and as a literary artist. Lionel Trilling reissued The Great Gatsby with a laudatory introduction, and soon some full-length studies together with critical anthologies came out. Fitzgerald’s reputation as an artist was gradually established and The Great Gatsby was regarded as his finest work of all, the novel also earned him a permanent position in American literature for its cultural relevance and artistic craftsmanship.

Most criticisms on The Great Gatsby belong to the sphere of traditional criticism．Traditional criticism sees the literary text as sufficient object of knowledge，a container of message．People read literary works to know history and the world around them for the chief function of literary works is to inform the public．Traditional criticism is often labeled as “extrinsic” critical approaches because it concerns itself with such matters as authorial intention，historical，moral or political consideration. The Great Gatsby is also the target of other kinds of criticisms．For example，Marxist Criticism starts from the assumption that literature such as The Great Gatsby must be understood in relation to historical and social reality as interpreted from a Marxist standpoint；Psychoanalytic criticism tends to concentrate on the relation between a literary text and the psychology of its creator；Reception Theory discusses the relation between the original reception of a literary text and how it is perceived at different stages in history up until the present．Reader-response Criticism claims that the meaning of a literary text cannot be seen as separate from the reader’s experience of it．And all texts create “gaps” or “blanks” which reader must use his or her imagination to fill。It is in this interaction between and reader that aesthetic response is created；Cultural Materialism and New historicism are forms of historicist criticism which are interested in literature within its socio-economic context．

Harvard Extension School professor John Paul Rollert says that Gatsby spends most of the novel far outside his comfort zone, attempting to pass himself off as a member of Tom and Daisy’s social set. The circumstances provide a special challenge for the performer who would inhabit him, for as the novel demonstrates time and time again, Gatsby is a terrible actor. His proffered past is a crazy quilt of incredible triumphs. His elaborate formality of speech must everyone be old sport? Nick says his mansion is “a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy”. (Fitzgerald，1991:11) And Tom rejects the idea the Gatsby is an Oxford man by noting he wears a pink suit. In short, Gatsby never fools anyone. He is not to the manor born. Fitzgerald was circumspect in how he portrayed Gatsby’s awareness of this failure. In a passage he removed from an early draft, Gatsby confesses “the truth” to Nick. “I’m empty,” he says, “and I guess people feel it. That must be why they keep on making up things about me, so I won’t be so empty. I even make up things myself.”

Since 1960s, The Great Gatsby has become a classic of American literature, and many countries studied it very deeply. However, our Chinese educational circle didn’t accept the novel at the beginning because of the political environment, luckily, after the reform and opening-up, it created a good environment for us to translate and study the American literature when China and the US established diplomatic relations.

Chinese author Cheng Hao in his essay The Love Destined to a Tragedy---on the source of tragedy of the protagonist in The Great Gatsby, provides the reasons why Gatsby was killed by Wilson. He says the real factors that lead to Gatsby’s tragedy are the class gap between Daisy and Gatsby, Daisy’s wanton character, and the unreachable love dream which is harbored in Gatsby’s mind. (Cheng Hao, 2006:15-16) Yang Huiqun in Comment on Fitzgerald’s Novel The Great Gatsby thinks that this novel exposes the representative figures human nature of falseness, indifference and selfishness under the cult of gold-worship’s trend. When Gatsby died, few people came to his funeral. It was really like the Chinese saying “Power gone, adulation gone”. (Yang Huiqun，2002:18-19) Ma Ruiqing and Ren Shujing in their The Analysis to the Death of The Great Gatsby point out the economic property and spiritual lost of American after the First World War through the analysis of the tragic fate of the protagonist Gatsby. (Ma Ruiqingamp; Ren Shujing，2007:22-24) Yang Li and Xu Yingguo in their An Ironic Love Story---Death, Love and Social Reality in The Great Gatsby claims that in this novel the writer Fitzgerald uses death to measure love and exposes the darkness and unfairness of the social reality. By discussing the relationship among the protagonist’s death, his love and the social reality, it suggests that the social reality decides people’s opinions on love. Meanwhile, the choice that the roles make when they face death and love also criticizes and exposes the social reality.

3. The Love Tragedy in The Great Gatsby

3.1 Gatsby’s Pursuit of Love

Gatsby’s attitude towards love is royal and persistent. Gatsby’s love to Daisy has lasted for 5 years. To win her love, he even challenges to bootleg wines. After he achieves a large sum of fortune, he chooses to buy a luxury apartment and holds parties every Saturday to attract his beloved girl. In his heart, Daisy is always like a holy and beautiful girl with white dresses. When he meets her for the first time, he is so excited. He even attributes his failure to his poorness after Daisy chooses not to love him, and then he decides to change himself. However, he never imagines that she is a girl with vanity and vulgarity. He never criticizes for Daisy’s materialism. After years’ efforts, he gathers a large amount of money and desires to win Daisy’s love. In order to attract her attention, he waits for 5 years and even buys a block of building only aims to meat Daisy by accident. To win her love, he can sacrifice for everything. Although after he meets with her and senses her materialism, he still doesn’t want to give up his girl. One day, Daisy is too agitated to kill Myrtle. He decides to take all the responsibilities for her mistake and does not care about what kind of consequences it will cause. All of his heart and mind are to protect her. Gatsby stays outside her house since he dares that Daisy will be beat by Tom. However, all of his behaviors do not touch Daisy at all. Even after his death, his beloved girl does not cry for him but choose to travel with her husband instead. This is the most pathetic betrayal from his lover. In the fourth part, the thesis will analyze the causes of Gatsby’s love tragedy, including his naive and innocent character as well as the cruelty of the upper class.

3.2 The Disillusionment of Gatsby’s Love

Gatsby’s love is actually the victim of the reality. Five years ago, Daily refuses to marry Gatsby and chooses the wealthy Tom to become her husband. In the following five years, Gatsby uses various means to attract Daisy’s attention and they start an ambiguous relationship. However, Gatsby has just used illegal ways to make great fortune, and does not win real social status. Instead, he is despised by Tom who comes from upper class. He tries to give Daisy the sense of security and let her believe that he can take good care of her. However, his expectation is impossible for he is lack of the ability. His love is frustrated twice by the reality.

Gatsby is too innocent to believe that he can acquire his lost love and beloved girl once he gets enough fortune. However, he is wrong because Daisy is actually a creation of the modern society. She loves material things a lot. When they meet each other again, Gatsby enjoys manipulation from Daisy and treats it as her love for him. However, it is only Daisy’s way to seek to stimulate. When Gatsby decides to face Tom together with Daisy and speaks out their relationship, Daisy seems to be hesitated and undetermined. At the end of the novel, Gatsby is shot to death and finally became the victim of love.

4. Analysis of the Causes of Gatsby’s Love Tragedy

4.1 Naivety and Innocence in Gatsby’s Character

From the moral and ethical dimensions, many people criticize Daisy and speak highly of Gatsby’s selflessness to love. However, people also have to show our regrets for his naivety and innocence in his character. Love is emotional but also has to be rational and can not be more important than morality. In Gatsby’s value towards love, firstly, he loses his personal integrity and is not careful enough when choosing his lover. To Gatsby, his love motivation is not to find a soul mate, instead, he pursues for a beautiful outlook. His standards of love value are totally divergent from moral standards. Meanwhile, he does not have a clear idea about the relationship between money and love. What he strongly believes is that love can be exchanged with fortune. This kind of value makes him a millionaire. However, his behaviors such as bootlegging, accumulating fortunes, ignorance towards morality have all lose the basic love morality. Secondly, he does not have a clear understanding about Daisy’s immorality. When Daisy meets him again, she is so excited since Gatsby has become rich now. However, this kind of money worship does not stop Gatsby’s love towards her.

From the perspective of psychology and personality, it shows that Gatsby’s love is doomed to be a tragedy. Gatsby has lost his individuality in his pursuit for love and totally becomes altruistic. An altruist in the morality level is one kind of personality that people advocate. It means that people should consider about things from the perspective of others. However, altruists in the psychological level is the lost of independent personality. It refers that the aim to help others to achieve there values has become one’s guidance of behavioral orientation. Altruism is actually a religious belief. Gatsby has totally lost his independent personality in his pursuit of love and has the tendency to sacrifice him under the value of altruism. Love should be equal. However, Gatsby has totally lost himself in his pursuit for love. In order to win Daisy’s love, he has totally become a paranoiac and derails his normal live. This kind of love is a mistake. A French philosopher and ethicist, Comte, thinks that altruism should base on egoism. Gatsby’s attitude towards love is wrong. The total altruism is a distortion of human nature, manifestation of paranoia and loses of personality.

Those contradictions mentioned above are all fatal. It decides that Gatsby’s love will lead to a tragic ending. It begins with a total altruism and also ends with it. Even though Gatsby is not shot to death in the end, he can also not have a bright future. There lie many possibilities. Daisy may be attracted by wealthier man and betray Gatsby since she is attracted by Gatsby’s fortune at the very beginning. She may abandon Gatsby after she has spent all the money. It shows that, due to Gatsby’s naivety and innocence in character, Gatsby’s love is destined to be a tragedy since a wrong direction will definitely lead to a wrong ending.

Material or spirit, it’s a difficult choice to Gatsby. On one hand, Gatsby has high morality. He is different with others. If he is hypocoristic and cruel like Tom, he will not achieve sympathy and appreciation from readers. He puts all his hope on Daisy. In his heart, Daisy is his green light. In order to achieve his dream, he makes efforts to win fortunes. To attract Daisy’s attention, he holds many parties. However, he himself does not love it at all. So he chooses to disappear in the feasts.

4.2 The Cruelty of the Upper-class People

Firstly, the class division lies among them is insurmountable. The aristocracy cannot only inherit fortune but also inherit social class and their pride and arrogance. Even though Gatsby has a large sum of money, he cannot acquire same social status as those who come from upper class only because he comes from lower class. Secondly, the different social classes have lead to the inequality of their love. Because of their different perspectives of love, Fitzgerald aims to disclose the huge differences of love in different social status. Love always favors people from upper class. He cannot marry Daisy who comes from upper class and never expects to win Tom who is also from aristocracy class. Thirdly, the division of class has led to the unfairness of fortune. People from lower class keep struggling for love and fortune but fail finally. Gatsby’s death does not bring any alerts to Tom and Daisy; instead, they keep living in the wealthy but vanity society. They do not have to pay for what they have done to Gatsby and do not feel regretful. Fourthly, in order to achieve more fortune and higher social status, aristocracies always like to connect each other through marriages. They just marry to make good use of each other. Marriages like this deem to be empty-shell ones. People from lower class have to pretend to be wealthy people with great powers, which will finally lead to many tragedies.

5. The Realistic Significance

This book is of great significance. The background of The Great Gatsby is set in Long Land in 1922. It narrates from the critical perspective of America. In that time, with the development of economy, bootlegging and criminals happened all the time. Fitzgerald tries to disclose the reality behind the entire phenomenon. And this book has much realistic significance now. In the following paragraph, the thesis is going to analyze the significance from the perspective of love, money, and moral lesson.

5.1 Love and Money

One of the main topics in this book is about love and money. Love stands for the spiritual life while money stands for material life. Just like Hamlet under the narration of Shakespeare, spiritual life or material life is such a difficult thing for Gatsby to choose. On one hand, Gatsby’s love towards Daisy is very pure. Although at the very beginning, Gatsby just wants to earn some money from Daisy. However, with time goes by, he finds that she is such an interesting girl. So he falls in love with her. He tries his best to love her and can even shoulder mistakes that she has made. He tries every mean to attract her attention and strives for her love for 5 years. The writer is quite touched by his sincere and pure attitude towards love.

However, from this story, it is clear that, actually he loves her improperly. Even he finds out she is just a material girl, he does not stop his love to her. To the author’s opinion, this behavior is not reasonable and should be a negative example for modern people. In our modern life, there are many stories about bitter love. For instance, many people do not know how to select between love and money, so there are many love tragedies. It is often seen that once a man and a woman have fallen in love with each other, they will try all means to pursue the love. But once they have faced the dilemma between love and money, they can not have a satisfactory selection and finally have to break up with each other. The author thinks a sensible love is that, the lovers will enhance himself as well as his lover when they are together. “If there are realistic problems such as social status, material status and so on, it’s better to give up and pray for each other.” (Tang Suping, 1998:46).

In order to win the acceptance from others and love from Daisy, Gatsby tries every mean to earn money. The author thinks this behavior is unacceptable. Even though money is the basic requirement of life, it should not be treasured too much. People cannot even make money in the illegal way. Especially in our modern life, money can do a lot of things. For example, if you want to enjoy a vacation outside your country, money does a great favor. Money may sometimes buy you entertainment. However, money is not the most important thing. Take some examples, in modern times; it can be found that money is required in every marriage. In the past time, people value more about love. But now, money seems more important to some new couples. It is a symbol of wealth, social status and so on. A few days ago, there is news. A father commits suicide since he cannot prepare enough dowries for her daughter. There is comparing phenomenon existing every where when holding marriage ceremonies. From this story, it can be seen that Gatsby is led to death in his pursuit of fortune. Even though he is wealth enough, he cannot win true love from Daisy.

To conclude, although both love and money are important, only spiritual fortune will last forever.

5.2 Moral Lesson

In this book, a lot of moral lessons can be learnt from the stories told in the book. It can be seen that, the author of this book wants to tell the readers money is actually not as important as morality. One can not choose to be immoral only to make money. What’s more, the behaviors like Daisy’s should be blamed. She loves people only in material level instead of the spiritual level. She abandons Gatsby at the very beginning only because he is poor.

Even though Gatsby dies for her, Daisy still does not feel sorry and guilty. The author thinks it’s very immoral. Although one should be careful when he or she is choosing partner, once they have got married, no matter what happens, one should be loyal to the other. It’s important for human beings to build correct moral standard before marriage. This will guide them to live a correct life in the future and ensure a loyal relationship between the couple. If they have not done that, they may neither undertake the due obligations when they make mistakes in the future, nor to build a healthy and stable relationship between each other. It is more and more important for modern people to cultivate healthy morality, especially in a society which overemphasizes the importance of money and neglects the necessity of morality.

Though time and place is quite different from that in The Great Gatsby, many similarities still can be found in today’s society. The values, moral ideas and spiritual outlook have changed a lot. Reading and making researches on classic novels can help people set the right values and obtain a great way to understand the meaning of life.

6. Conclusion

Gatsby’s dream is actually a combination of love and money. He believes that the money can get everything, but he is not the pursuit of money as the ultimate goal of the vulgar dream, he chased the money --- only for his ideal love fantasy. In the term of Gatsby the “dream of getting rich” and “Love Dream” are inseparable. The former is a means; the latter is a goal, as the latter without the former will never become true. Without money Gatsby and Daisy could never have the opportunity to rekindle old dreams, with a lot of money, Gatsby will be more confidence. 

The root of Gatsby’s tragedy is the darkness and emptiness of capitalist society. “American dream” is essentially a spirit to inspire people to make progress, it has a positive meaning. From the 18th century to the 1920s, it created a brilliant material civilization and the United States Spiritual civilization. But in the 1920s, after the World War I, the American dream has been decadent, corrupt, and the original hard working, frugality, temperance and other values are weak; they were replaced by hedonism, extravagance and waste. After the World War I the U.S. youth realize the war is just a fight for the upper –class’ interests, but bring millions of death and grief. They feel being cheated, and so disappointed, confusion, extreme spiritual emptiness, they then blind pursuit of material wealth, the formation of “money first” mentality. The “American Dream” that depend on the success of pure personal struggle was no longer exist. 

The Great Gatsby is not only a vivid description for the life in 1920, but also reflects the theme of life which is worth thinking. The rebuilding of morality is the main theme of this novel. Many characters in the novel are selfish, stupid and unimportant. They are lack of spiritual life and indulge themselves in enjoyment of money and pleasure. From the view point of Fitzgerald, money can change people’s personalities but result in their feeling of irresponsibility. In the Jazz era, the moral reconstruction is very important. The Great Gatsby also has its realistic significance nowadays. There is a tendency that people are now becoming materialistic. Some scientists and economists think that it is unavoidable. However, from the tragic ending of Gatsby, it is important to understand that spiritual wealth is more important than material wealth. People should reconstruct their morality.

Works Cited

[1] Fitzgerald, Scott. The Great Gatsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.1991.

[2] James. E. Miller. F. Scott Fitzgerald: His Art and His Technique. New York: New York University Press, 1967.

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