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The Great Gatsby is also one of the most marvelously organic novels in the world and is usually considered as Fitzgerald’s finest novel. His works have become automatically identified with an American decade——he Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties. In the 1920’s of America, which calls the Jazz Age after World War I, many Americans felt distrust toward foreigners because they held them responsible for the war. Young people, disillusioned by their experiences in World War I rebelled against prewar attitudes and conventions .Women refused to give up the independence they had gained the jobs they got during the war. The Nineteenth Amendment gave them the right to vote and they demanded to be recognized as equals. Unfortunately, when the stock market crashed in October 1929, all of this came to a stop.
Since its publication, The Great Gatsby has attracted various literary criticisms and has been interpreted from difference angles by scholars, such as, the analysis of the symbolism, the structuralism, the contrast method, the theme and so on.
Wu Jiangguo’s article (2002) analyzes the novel through the perspective of symbolism in terms of three levels,symbolism in colors,symbolism in setting and symbolism in things. Dong Xiaoyan(2006) analyzes The Great Gatsby from structuralism perspective. Luo Xiaoyan applies by structuralism to analyze The Great Gatsby, the conflict between Gatsby and the Buchanans, which concerns the opposing attitudes and values of two groups of people——one thriving on dream, represented by Gatsby and ,the other living by physical pleasures, represented by the Lehan Richard (1990) comments Fitzgerald’s art and technique in Fitzgerald’s works. The Great Gatsby is a general comment of the American dream. American culture is characterized by a strong emphasis on the goal of monetary success and a weak emphasis on the importance of the legitimate means for the pursuit of success.
In a word, a large number of scholars have made great contribution to this influential work from various perspectives, from the author’s point of view, the archetypal interpretation to The Great Gatsby still need some supplement. The thesis will explore this work further more.
2 Fitzgerald’s Background and The Great Gatsby
In this chapter, the author will review some materials related to Fizgerald’s background and his masterpiece The Great Gatsby. Through this part, readers can learn more about Fitzgerald and his work, which can give some valuable reference to the hidden meaning in the text.
2.1 F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Background
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor Francis Scott Key, the author of The Star-Spangled Banner. Fitzgerald was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Though an intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Despite being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end. Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama. There 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.
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. Many of these events from Fitzgerald’s early life appear in his most famous novel. The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Like Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is a thoughtful young man from Minnesota, educated at an Ivy League school (in Nick’s case, Yale), who moves to New York after the war. Also similar to Fitzgerald is Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes wealth and luxury and who falls in love with a beautiful young woman while stationed at a military camp in the South.