本科毕业设计the disillusionment of the american dreamthe social significance of the great gatsby.docx

1、本科毕业设计the disillusionment of the american dreamthe social significance of the great gatsby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 学生姓名： 聂姿伊学 号： 200601114101院（系）： 外国语学院英语系专 业： 英语班 级： 2006级本科1班 指导教师姓名： 仝志敏指导教师职称： 讲师 起止时间： 2009年10月2010年5月（

2、外国语学院制表）The Disillusionment of the American DreamThe Social Significance of The Great GatsbyA Thesis SubmittedTo Foreign Languages DepartmentOf Zhongyuan University of TechnologyIn Partial Fulfillment of the RequirementsFor the Degree of Bachelor of ArtsByNie ZiyiSupervisor：Professor Tong ZhiminMay,

3、 2010SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES Zhongyuan University 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 belie

4、f, 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 pla

5、giarism 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

6、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 plea

7、sure 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 t

8、he novel and the social reality and the diachronic analysis of the American dream.Key words: 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

9、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 Introduction 12 A Panorama of American Society in The Great Gatsby 22.1 Materialism 22.2 Immorality 32.3 Inequality 43 The Fall of the American Dr

10、eam Reflected in The Great Gatsby 63.1 The definition of the American Dream 63.2 The evolution of the American Dream 73.3 The disillusionment of the American Dream 74 Conclusion 9References 10Acknowledgements 11 The Disillusionment of the American DreamThe Social Significance of The Great Gatsby1 In

11、troductionThe Great Gatsby, a novel written by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald 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 partie

12、s 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 Myr

13、tle 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

14、 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 summar

15、y of the novel. Though it tells us a story 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

16、love between a man and a woman, but actually 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 Gatsb

17、y without being impressed by the opulent parties with wild jazz music that Gatsby throws every Saturday night. The novel is 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 Tw

18、enties, 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. 2.1 MaterialismMaterialism can be clearly seen from the life of Daisy and Gatsby. The former only l

19、oves 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 a

20、fter 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

21、 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

22、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 Ame

23、rica during the 1920s. The people from various walks of life who attend Gatsbys parties show the greedy chase for wealth. The quick 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

24、 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 dre

25、am. 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 r

26、eality and they are definite to fail, to lose.” (Zhang, Wang, 2002)2.2 ImmoralityWe 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 and women had aggressively entered the workforce. When the w

27、ar 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 disillusion

28、ed, 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

29、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 E

30、ighteenth 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

31、 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

32、, silk stockings, heavy make-up and short, bobbed hair, announcing their presence by their appearance, all as Daisys friend Jordan, an extremely cynical woman golfer 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