《了不起的盖茨比》精明的商人和温柔的爱人(2)

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Introduction

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald has been called the “poet of borrowed time,” the “chronicler of the Jazz Age,” and the “dream dancer of the jazz age” along with a variety of other nicknames noting how closely his art mimicked his life and society in the 1920s. (Kane, 1976; Guo, 2011; Funderburke, 2012)

Just as Gatsby’s experience, Fitzgerald was born in a poor family. He was always the poorest boy, living in the richest neighborhoods and attending the most exclusive schools (Rompalske, 1999), which influenced Fitzgerald’s writing style a lot. When he was young, Fitzgerald started writing and never stopped. He did a great success in his writing career and made a large amount of money from his works once. However, he lived in a luxurious life and soon he ran out of his money. Despite his poor financial situation during his lifetime, Fitzgerald’s literature is widely considered some of the best of the American classics.( Funderburke, 2012) This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and the Dammed and The Great Gatsby are all his extraordinary works. Among those famous works he wrote, The Great Gatsby is recognized as the masterpiece of Fitzgerald, which was first published in 1925.

The story of Jay Gatsby took place in the summer of 1922, which began when Nick Caraway, a man from Minnesota, moved to the West Egg, a small town on New York’s Long Island. He became the neighbor to Gatsby, who owned a gorgeous mansion and held extremely lavish parties which aimed to attract Daisy, the woman Gatsby loved deeply. After knowing Nick was Daisy’s cousin, Nick drew Gatsby’s attention immediately and was invited to Gatsby’s parties. Gatsby wanted Nick to invite Daisy to tea, so he could show his house to her and rekindled the relationship with her in the past. It did work in a short period of time, but Tom, Daisy’s husband, broke Gatsby’s dream. Gatsby’s heartbreak over the relationship ended abruptly when he took the fall for a crime Daisy committed and was then killed as an act of revenge. After Gatsby’s funeral Nick moved back to the Midwest to escape the society he had grown to loathe for its corruption. (Sarah, 2012)

2. Literature Review of The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby has only a few rivals as the great American novel of the twentieth century; doubtless they would include works by Faulkner, Hemingway, Cather, and Dreiser.(Bloom, 2006) Over so many years, this classic piece of literature has been discussed by academic or non-academic readers all over the world for its unique style, characterization, and plot. “Essentially, the essays fall into three groups: those that explore techniques and craftsmanship, those that attempt to identify the symbolic power of Gatsby as a mythic figure, and those that insist that the novel’s greatest strength lies in its moral questioning of American involvement with the magic and power of wealth” (Prigozy, 28). Also, Cutchins and Steinbrink review the importance of the work in the traditional education system (2003; 1980; Sarah, 2012). Hawkes connects The Great Gatsby to the world of politics, McAdams to business ethics, and Mansell highlights how the novel documents the Jazz Age in America (2009; 1993; 1987; Sarah, 2012). Froehlich studied how The Great Gatsby’s patriarchal structure influences the characters’ sexuality, and goes so far as to claim that one of the main points in the book is that authentic love is unlikely in a patriarchal, capitalistic society (2011; Sarah, 2012). 源-自/751+文,论`文'网]www.751com.cn

With so many honors owned by The Great Gatsby, however, some negative criticism still can be heard towards it. The reviewer for the Raleigh News and Observer offers a representative example of that assessment: “The book is more or less exhilarating as read, but after it is all read and we look back at what Mr. Fitzgerald has given us, we have a wistful feeling that we wish there had been somebody good in the book” (Bryer, 217; Beuka, 2011). Another unnamed reviewer, in the Kansas City Star, takes a similarly offended tone, arguing that the immoral nature of the story and its characters makes it essentially not worth reading: “Mr. Fitzgerald is a clever writer, but in ‘The Great Gatsby’ his chosen field is so sordid and depressing that if the cleverness is there it is obscured by the details of his story” (Bryer, 221; Beuka, 2011).