On the Male Characters in The Great Gats

1、on the male characters in the great gatsbyacknowledgementsmy deepest gratitude goes first and foremost to my supervisor, ms *, whose brief instructions guided my thesis along the right direction, whose experienced suggestions prevented me from making the possible mistakes that a new hand was likely

2、to make, who read through my thesis and corrected it with tolerance. second, i would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to professor nie wei, who led me into the world of american literature. i am also greatly indebted to all the professors and teachers at the department of english for their cre

3、ative and patient teaching during the four years of my studies, which are helpful not only for my studies here, but also for my future career.last, my thanks would go to my beloved family for their loving considerations and great confidence in me all through these years. i also owe my sincere gratit

4、ude to my friends and my fellow classmates who gave me their help and time in listening to me and helping me work out my problems during the difficult course of the thesis. abstractfrancis scott fitzgerald (1896-1940) is a famous american writer in the first half of the twentieth century. he is rega

5、rded as the spokesman for “the lost generation” in american literature. in 1925, he published his masterpiece the great gatsby. the great gatsby has closer relationship with the american experiences than his other works do. it is a highly symbolic meditation on the disintegration of the american dre

6、am in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess.this paper focuses its attention on the male characters in the great gatsby.the first part analyzes the three male characters american dreams. the tragic hero gatsby, the dramatic narrator nick and the ugly upper-class tom, all bear strong

7、 aspiration of their own life. however, the difference between ideals and reality lead to the unavoidable destruction of their american dream. the second part studies their relations with daisy. the third part deeply explores fitzgeralds self-reflection upon the male characters. on one hand, fitzger

8、ald shows a running theme of how the american dream affects all of the characters in the great gatsby, especially the major male charactersgatsby, nick and tom. on the other hand, according to fitzgeralds personality and experiences, the three male characters are generally considered being written a

9、utobiographically reflecting different sides of the authors characters, which attracts readers to some extent.key words: american dream; fitzgerald; the great gatsby; american don quixote摘要弗司各特菲茨杰拉德(1896-1940)是二十世紀初美國著名作家，被認為是美國文學中“迷惘一代”的代言人。一九二五年，他出版了代表作了不起的蓋茨比。有評論說，了不起的蓋茨比在愛情故事后面隱藏著一股哀傷的細流，流露出菲茨杰拉

10、德對于美國夢想的失望。它反思了一個空前繁榮、物質(zhì)過剩時代的美國夢的破滅，展現(xiàn)了美國夢對人們?nèi)粘Ｉ畹南麡O影響，尤其是對男性人物（蓋茨比、尼克、湯姆）的影響。本文主要解讀了不起的蓋茨比中的男性形象，共分三個部分。第一章簡要分析書中三位男性人物：悲劇英雄蓋茨比、故事的敘述者尼克、丑陋的上層階級湯姆。盡管他們對自己的生活都充滿了雄偉的抱負，但變質(zhì)了的美國夢卻粉碎了他們的夢想。第二章進一步試探蓋茨比、尼克、湯姆與戴西之間的關系。第三章深入剖析菲茨杰拉德與蓋茨比、尼克的關系。從根本意義上說，了不起的蓋茨比是一部有“二元”主角的小說它既是關于蓋茨比的故事，也是“關于”尼克的故事，而這兩個人最終都演化成為道

11、德象征：蓋茨比體現(xiàn)了精神頹廢，而尼克則代表了一種對道德成熟和精神成熟的期盼。菲茨杰拉德運用獨特的手法描述了這三位特殊的男性人物。通過對這三個人物與菲茨杰拉德的對照可以看出：作者從某種程度上是在講述自己的經(jīng)歷，蓋茨比、尼克、湯姆實際上是作家個性特點三個不同側(cè)面的反映，這也是小說成功的魅力所在。關鍵詞：美國夢，菲茨杰拉德，了不起的蓋茨比,美國式唐吉柯德table of contents論文誠信聲明iacknowledgementsiiabstractiii摘要ivintroduction1chapter i male characters american dreams31.1. the trag

12、ic hero gatsby31.2. the dramatic narrator nick51.3. the ugly upper-class tom8chapter ii the relationship between the male characters and daisy102.1. gatsby and daisys sweetheart relationship102.2. nick and daisys relative relationship122.3. tom and daisys conjugal relationship13chapter iii the relat

13、ionship between the male characters and fitzgerald163.1. gatsby and fitzgerald183.1.1. similar background183.1.2. similar experiences193.1.3. similar tragic fates213.2. nick and fitzgerald213.2.1. the double vision213.2.2. the spokesman of fitzgerald22 conclusion24bibliography.27introductiontime and

14、 tide make the man. this is true with francis scott fitzgerald, an outstanding american novelist and short story writer in the modern period.fitzgerald was born on september 24, 1896, in st. paul, minnesota, the staid american middle west then, where he was brought up, though his life and writings a

15、re associated with the fashionable east coast. in 1913, he went to princeton, at his time one of the most prestigious and traditional american universities. he left college in 1917 because of academic difficulties and enlisted in the army, serving as a lieutenant at a staff headquarters when the uni

16、ted states entered world war i. while stationed in montgomery, he met and fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beauty named zelda sayre, who became the model for most of the pretty, merry heroines of his fiction later. zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth,

17、 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 d

18、amned and a collection of short stories, tales of the jazz age. in 1925 fitzgerald managed to complete his masterpiece: the great gatsby, foreseeing the doom and failure of the post-war boom years of the “roaring twenties” in the midst of which he lived. his next novel, tender is the night (1934) wa

19、s 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 was the most famous chronicler of 1920

20、s america, an era that he dubbed “the jazz age”. written in 1925, the great gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the american economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. it is a picture of the prohibition era and a masterpiece relat

21、ed with irony and pathos to the legendry of the “american dream”, and received favorable comments from the famous critics t.s. eliot, never a hasty or extravagant critic, praised the novel was “the first step that american fiction has taken since henry james”. the great gatsby tells the life story o

22、f jay gatsby, a pursuer of the american dream, who is once a nobody from the midwest. in order to regain daisys love, the embodiment of the american dream in his eyes, gatsby makes his way into the riches and even becomes one of them by means of illegal business. yet he finally finds his pursuit in

23、vain, and he is murdered indirectly by daisy and her husband in the end.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 cor

24、e of their life is to enjoy happiness from money. fitzgerald combines his own experiences with his nations experiences and reflects the features of his time. chapter imale characters american dreamsthe american dream had existed long before “the declaration of independence” was formally written by t

25、homas jefferson in 1776. “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” (tang sooping, 1980: 11)people felt it, were inspired by it and

26、were united by it as a nation. in spite of all the distances between dream and reality, every hundred of years, there rose up a model of success, who was nobody at the beginning and somebody at last, who strengthened the belief of the american dream in peoples hearts rather than minds, who seemed to

27、 prove where there was a dream there was a way. the american dream could be amazingly bold. an ordinary american citizen might dream of succeeding the president. little fitzgerald imagined he was the son of a king and his gatsby imagined “he was a son of god”. according to the characters respective

28、expectation, it can be seen that the american dream was not confined to one social class or type of person, but to the whole nation, everyone. these male characters in the great gatsby whose human values have been corrupted due to the corrupting influence of money. the characters believe the america

29、n dream is nothing else than glamorous material wealth, which in essence will set them apart from the rest of lower class society. the pursuit of this american dream produces nothing but problems for the characters. 1.1. the tragic hero gatsbythe title character of the great gatsby is a young man, a

30、round thirty years old, who rise from an impoverished childhood in rural north dakota to become fabulously wealthy, all due to his pursuit of ideals. the ideals that gatsby strives to achieve are: the acquisition of wealth, re-defining his character in the pursuit of perfection, and attaining his id

31、eal romantic love. his first ideal is to escape the working class and attain a position in the upper class. when gatsby was young he was nothing more than a salmon fisher and a clam digger. the turning point in his life is when he meets dan cody, who allows gatsby to work for him. as gatsby works wi

32、th cody he gets accustomed to the luxurious life style, and is taught to idealize wealth. after the great war, gatsby goes into illegal business: he works with a man who has fixed the world tennis cup, and they own a chin of pharmacies that sell grain alcohol over the counter at times when all alcoh

33、ol is prohibited. another ideal of gatsby is the pursuit of perfection, and so he begins to revolutionize his own character to achieve perfection in himself in order to have daisy. not only is gatsby trying to reach perfection but he is also trying to attain a place in the upper class. in order to i

34、mpress his love he needs something more than just lavish items. gatsbys last and the most important ideal is the pursuit of daisy, who gatsby was seeing before the war. she said that she would wait but instead she married into the upper class. gatsby devises a plan to get daisys attentionhe throws a

35、 colossal party every weekend and he asks all his guests if they know daisy or her whereabouts. gatsby gets lucky when he finds out that his friend, nick, is also daisys cousin, nick sets up a meeting between the two. after numerous encounters gatsby finally asks daisy to leave her husband and marry

36、 him instead. it is not in the end does gatsby finally realize thathis car, his mansion and everything else he has done is not enough to persuade daisy to leave her husband tom, who is in the upper class and is extravagantly wealthy. for daisy, staying in the upper class is far more important than l

37、ove or even her own happiness. gatsby has a strong desire for self-actualization, changing his name from james gatz to jay gatsby to represent his reinvention of himself. his relentless quest for daisy demonstrates that gatsby has an extraordinary ability to transform his hopes and dreams into reali

38、ty. this talent for self-invention is what gives gatsby his quality of “greatness”. gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything on his dream and, not realizes that his dreams are unworthy of him. “gatsby invests daisy with an idealistic perfection that she canno

39、t possibly attain in reality and pursues her with a passionate zeal that blinds him to her limitations.” (phillips, 2007: 32-34)“gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. it eluded us then, but thats no mattertomorrow we will run faster, stretch ou

40、t our arms fartherand one fine morningso we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (fitzgerald, 2005: 224)these words conclude the novel, returning to the theme of the significance of the past to dreams of the future, here represented by the green light, which foc

41、uses on the struggle of human beings to achieve their goals by both transcending and recreating the past. yet humans prove themselves unable to move beyond the past: in the metaphoric language used here, the current draws them backward as they row forward toward the green light. this past functions

42、as the source of their ideas about the future (epitomized by gatsbys desire to recreate 1917 in his affair with daisy) and they cannot escape it as they continue to struggle to transform their dreams into reality. while they never lose their optimism (“tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our ar

43、ms farther”), they expend all of their energy in pursuit of a goal that moves ever farther away. this apt metaphor characterizes both gatsbys struggle and the american dream itself. for dreams, gatsby lived. for dreams, gatsby died. gatsby keeps himself as a dreamer in a dreamless world. gatsby does

44、 not follow the advice “when in rome, do as the romans do”, so he is not given a chance to live. but the dust of the world could not cover him all over and diminish him. he is forever shinning. his illusion makes him great. his illusion is his most valuable possession.1.2 the dramatic narrator nickf

45、itzgerald has a very unique way to arrange his novel. the first chapter of the great gatsby does not tell us where we are going. it raises many subjects, and part of the problem of reading the text is finding the connection between dialogues. the observer-narrator is an important central character i

46、n a novel, through whom the author tells the story in the first-person narration. as “the central concept of the analysis of narration”, the narrator is familiar with different characters to different degrees. as a witness, the narrator tells about what he sees and hears. in the novel of the great g

47、atsby, the narrator nick carraway is placed as an observer, through his gradually increasing knowledge of the facts the reader can follow the story and feel its significance. “the interest in the story is constantly being increased by the process of nicks discovery, and thus the interpretation is co

48、nverted into a constantly expanding aspect of the actual narration.” (gao mei, 2007: 55) nicks qualification as a sympathetic listener is carefully established at the beginning of this novel. nick represented the middle class standard of judgment, because, according to his own narration, nicks famil

49、y had a quite satisfactory economic and social foundation: “my family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle western city for three generations. the carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that were descended from the dukes of buccleuch, but the actual founder of my

50、 line was my grandfathers brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the civil war, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.” (fitzgerald, 2005: 4)nick can take care of himself, plan for the development of his career, and show sociability to and con

51、cern for others. he is a young man from minnesota who, after being educated at yale and fighting in world war i, goes to new york city to learn the bond business. honest, tolerant, and inclined to reserve judgment, nick often serves as a confidant for those with troubling secrets. after moving to we

52、st egg, a fictional area of long island where is home to the newly rich, nick quickly befriends his next-door neighbor, the mysterious jay gatsby. as daisy buchanans cousin, he facilitates the rekindling of the romance between her and gatsby. the great gatsby is told entirely through nicks eyes, his

53、 thoughts and perceptions shape and color the story.“nick is in a strategic position half inside and half outside the action in order to put together bits of the story of gatsby and daisy.” (gao mei, 2007: 55) he attempts to bring them together again after five years of separation, and thus step by

54、step becomes involved in gatsbys story. he ends the story by burying gatsby, showing himself as a critical factor to define the structure of the novel. insofar as nick plays a role inside the narrative, he evidences a strongly mixed reaction to life on the east coast, one that creates a powerful int

55、ernal conflict that he does not resolve until the end of the book. on one hand, nick is attracted to the fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of new york. that seemed to show that he is also pursuing an illusory thing. but unlike gatsby, he does not dive headfast into the pursuit of his dream. he does n

56、ot even admit that he is a dreamer. otherwise, he shouldnt have been amazed by gatsbys dream. on the other hand, he finds that lifestyle grotesque and damaging. “thats my middle westthe street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty darki see now that this has been a story of the west, after alltom and

57、 gatsby, daisy and jordan and i, were all westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to eastern life.” (fitzgerald, 2005: 219)the above sentences show that nick realizes for the first time that although his story is set on the east coast, the west

58、ern character of his acquaintances (“some deficiency in common”) is the source of the storys tensions and attitudes. after witnessing the unraveling of gatsbys dream and presiding over the appalling spectacle of gatsbys funeral, nick realizes that the fast life of revelry on the east coast is a cover for the terrifying moral emptiness that the valley of ashes symbolizes. “even when the east excited me most, even when i was most keenly aware of its superiority to the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which spared only the chi