英語畢業(yè)論文OntheSymbolisminTheGreatGatsby

1、英語畢業(yè)論文 on the symbolism in the great gatsby了不起的蓋茨比中的象征主義on the symbolism in the great gatsbyabstract the novel the great gatsby was written by francis scott fitzgerald in the novel he portrayed characters and stressed the theme from a new point of view by unique narrative techniques as wel 1 as appl

2、iance of images and symbols so to some extent he is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century in american literature the novel reveals gatsbys pursuit and disillusion of american dream through the symbols of the color main characters names and the name of places the thesis will focus on the sy

3、mbol ism in the great gatsby the purpose is to let readers understand his novels and the age which he lived inkey words the great gatsby symbolism american dream摘 要了不起的蓋茨比是由弗蘭西斯司各特菲茨杰拉德所寫的一 篇小說在其作品了不起的蓋茨比中他不僅采用全新的視角獨(dú)特的敘述技巧而 口運(yùn)用犬量的意向和象征主義書法來刻畫人物突出主題統(tǒng)一結(jié)構(gòu)所以從某種程 度上來說可以認(rèn)為他是20世紀(jì)美國文壇上最杰出的小說家之一本文圍繞顏色主 人公名字地

4、名等中心象征分別從不同的方面表現(xiàn)了蓋茨比對美國夢的追求 并揭 示了美國夢的虛幻及其對人們靈魂的腐蝕這篇論文將研究彖征主義在了不起的 蓋茨比中的意義目的是為了讓更多的讀者了解他的小說和他生活的時(shí)代關(guān)鍵詞了不起的蓋茨比象征主義美國夢contents1 introduction of the author and the novel the great gatsby1a introduction of the author and his works 1b introduction of the novel the great gatsby2ii usage of symbols in the gr

5、eat gatsby4a some concepts about symbolism4b different symbols in the great gatsby51 symbolic theme in the american dream52 symbols about colors83 symbols about characters and their nameslo4 other symbols in the great gatsby 11ttt conclusionworks citedl4i introduction of the author and the novel the

6、 great gatsbya introduction of the author and his worksfrancis scott fitzgerald is famous for novels and short stories in jazz age he is mainly remembered as the spokesman and laureate of the jazz age and flaming youth his life exhibits the failure of the american dream the famous poet and critic ae

7、rate said that the great gatsby took a great progress in american novels since henry james donaldson 283 fitzgerald was born in st paul minnesota on september 24 1896 the son of a failed wicker furniturc salesman and an irish immigrant with a large inheritance fitzgerald grew up in a solidly catholi

8、c and up-middle class envirorunent during the 1920s he is a prominent novelist in the american literature owned the title of the spokesman of the jazz age and the laurel of poet fitzgerald wrote the first novel the side of paradise it is not really very good because juvenile but is historically inte

9、resting it became immensely popular for the simple reason that it caught the tone of the age essentially autobiographical the book describes fitzgcralds sense of failure with his academic performance and the frustration of his dreams at pri nee ton it portrays at the same time a gen era tion his gen

10、eration feeling frustrated with life in which all gods are dead all wars are fough t all faith in man in shake n cha ng 214-215 on the streng th of his one successful book fitzgerald won the expensive prize of zclda and began in a sense his onerous life of making money to support her this affected h

11、is writing tremendously the people who like fitzgerald stormed into new york as the pattern of youth wealth and beauty and became the admiration of all who met them in the early twenties fitzgerald wrote two collection flappers and philosophers which glittered with the image of the people who like f

12、itzgerald as the symbol of an american ideal the word flapper used to describe the new woman of the womein of the postwar period became widespread henceforward and tales of the jazz age which 1 ike mark twa ins the gilded age gave its n ame to an imports nt historical period in the history of the co

13、untry the 1920s or the jazz age was in the words of malcolm cowley not so much a historical period as a legend of glitter of recklessness and of t ale nt in such profusi on tha t it was sown broadcast like wild oats it was a legend of americans adolescence before pain set in fitzgerald became the an

14、gel of the twenties and his writings those of a man inside that legendary period in 1922 fitzgerald finished his second novel the beautiful and the damned the silhouette of fitzgerald as the tragic hero of the period first seen in this side of paradise became more definable here and then his masterp

15、iece the great gats by is appeared in his mind after this fitzgerald wrote one more important book tender is night and some collections of short stories such all the sad young men and taps at reveille his last novel the las t tyco on has not finished yet before he died the author is in sure control

16、of his powers so that johndos passes sees the beginning of a real grand styleb introduction of the novel the great gatsbyfitzgeralds representative work is the great gatsby one of the classics of modern americein literature the story is told in the first person by nick carraway a quite young midwest

17、erner in the spring of 1922 nick carrway leaves his midwestern home to enter the bond business in new york city he rents ci small house in west egg ei village on long island made up largely of the summer mansion of the newly rich next door to his house is the enormous home of mr gatsby whom nick has

18、 yet to meet one evening nick dines with a distant cousin daisy buchanan who lives in nearby east egg the home of the iong-established rich also present are her husband tom and jordan baker an attractive young golfer the buchanans have been drifting aimlessly around the world for several years and d

19、uring his visit ni ck 1 earns that tom has taken a mi stress returning home ni ck sees mr gatsby standing alone on his 1 awn with his arms outstretched to ward east egg across the bay soon after tom insists on introducing nick to his mis tress a woman dis tin guished by vitality rat her tha n pretti

20、n css myr tic wilson lives with her husband over a gas station in a valley of ashes between long tsland and the city tom nick and myrtle go to the city where they are joined by myr ties sis ter and a married couple living in the apartment below the one tom keeps everyone gets drunk and the party end

21、s when tom breaks myrtics nose because she insists on uttering daisy namcnick is invited to one of gatsbys parties and amidst the hordes of guests he cncounters jordan baker they sit at a table and find their tab 1 cmats to be mr gatsby himself later jordan tells nick that gatsby wants him to arrang

22、e a tea at his own little house with only gatsby nick and daisy present nick learns that gatsby and daisy were in love before her marriage and that the mansion and the parties were all maintained in the hope that she or someone who knew her would eventually arrive the reunion takes place and soon af

23、ter the parties cease in the meantime nick has become involved wi th jordan baker al though he finds her incurably dishonest one after noon nick jordan and gatsby have lunch at the buchanans house and in the course of the conversation tom perceives that his wife is in love with gatsby they eill go t

24、o the city with tom and gatsby driving each others cars and on the way tom stops at wilsons gas station there he learns that wilson has found out that myrtle has a lover al though wil so n does not know the mans identity and he is planning to take his wife away the party rents a hotel room in the ci

25、ty where gatsby tries to force daisy to tell tom that she loves him and has ncver loved her husband when she balks at this last demand tom steps in to reveal gatsbys crooked business dealings browbeat ing hi s wi fe out of her in sis ts that daisy and gatsby retur n to long island together in gatsby

26、s car on their return trip daisy and gatsby pass wilsons gas station with daisy at wheel myrtie who has been locked up by her dis trough t husba nd recognizes gat sbys car as the one tom was driving earlier she rushes onto the road and is killed daisy and gatsby continue on but toms car stops tom te

27、lls wilson secretly that the car he was in earlier was not his own that night gatsby watches over the buchanan house to see that no harm comes to daisy when gatsby arrives home nick goes over to his house and hears and the true story of his past born james gatsz he was the son of an unsuccessful far

28、m couple in the middle west but he has changed his name and way of life at 17 when he was taken up by a rich yachtsman named dan cody when cody died gatsby joined the army and was stationed near daisys home in louisville he courted the wealthy 18-ycar-old under the pretence that he was her social eq

29、ual and fell in love with her unable to return from the war and marry her before she wed tom bucha nan gat sby det ermined eventually to heive eno ugh money to win her back after delivering this tale gatsby and nick sit some more nick reluctant to leave gatsby alone eventually however nick catches t

30、he train to new york and his office that afternoon george wilson makes his way to toms house in search of the yellow car tom maliciously tells him that the car bclongs to gatsby emd george iminediatcly leaves for gatsbys house lie finds gatsby floating in the swimming pool and he shoots him he then

31、shoots himself nick discovers gatsby dead in the pool when he returns from new york nick finds himself in charge of making all the funeral arrangements for gatsby although he wants to provide him with a decent funeral he is unable to find anyone willing to attend the buchaneins have left the country

32、 without a word and others who had once attended gatsbys parties now say that he got what he deserved in the end only nick the owl-eyed man the servant and gatsbys father are there a short time later nick meets tom buchanan on the street and learns that daisy has never admitted her gidlt tom still t

33、hinks that it was gatsby who killed myrtle and so he destructive that it is part of their nature gatsby he sees really was worth the whole dcimn bunch of them put togetherii usage of symbols in the great gatsbya some concepts about symbol ismin lit era ture a symbol is a t hing that refers or sugges

34、ts more t han its lit era! mea ning there are quite a lot of symbols that appear in ord in ary life for the use of symbol is by no mea ns lim ited to lit erei ture and art for instance a dove is a symbol of peace the flag is the symbol of a country and the cross is the symbol of the christian rel ig

35、ion there are symbols adopted by a whole society and recognized by all members of such a society there are other kinds of symbols such as the figure 3 which may be called abstract symbols but symbols in literature works are different from either of the other types generally speaking a literary symbo

36、l does not have a common social acceptance as does the flag it is rather a symbol the poet or the writer only in the context of that work it differs from the kind of symbol illustrated by the figure 3 because it is concretc and specific a poet or a writer uses symbols for the same reason heshe uses

37、similes metaphors and images etc they help to expresshishcr meaning in a way that will appeal to the senses and to the emotions of the reader most symbols in literature and everyday life as well possess a tremendous condensing power their focusing on the relationships between the visible and what th

38、ey suggest can kindle a flame of response from the heat the reader broods and they bring it into a single impact of course in liters ture works symbols uni ike t hose in ord in ary life usually do not stand for any one meaning not for anything absolutely definite they point they hint or as henry jam

39、es put it they cast long shadows gu and he 98 symbol is generally acknowledged to be one of fiction it is no less frequently and no less important the fact is that when a reader reads a work of fiction his focus is mostly cast upon the plot the character and the language used so that the symbols are

40、 automatically background on the readers part but in some novels and stories the symbol ism 1 ooms so 1 arge that the reader will fail to get a comprehensive understanding of the workwithout paying special attention to the symbols in a broad literary sensea symbol is trope thatcombincs a literal and

41、 sensuous quality with anabstract or suggestive aspectyuan and qian 62it is anything whichsignifies somethingn this sense al 1 words are symbols in discussingliterature however theterm symbol is applied only to a word or phrasethat signifies an object or event which in its turn signifies something o

42、r has range of refercncc beyond it some symbols arc conventional or public thus the cross the red white and blue and the good shepherd are terms that refer to symbolic objects of which the further significance is dctcrmina.tc within a particular culture poets like all of us use such conventional sym

43、bols many poets however also use privates or personal symbols often they do so by exploiting widely shred associations between an object or action and a particular concept for example the general association of a peacock with pride and of an eagle with heroic endeeivor or the rising sun with birth a

44、nd the setting sun with death or climbing with effort or progress and descent with surrender or failure some poets however repeatcdly use symbols whose significances they largely generates themselves and these pose a more difficult problem in interpretationb different symbols in the great gatsbythe

45、deep meaning reflected by f schott fitzgeralds descriptions in hi s masterpiece the great gatsby of the three major female characters daisy jordan and myrtle are analyzed in the text all the three women are selfish hollow materialistic and all of them have tragic ends in a profound sense fitzgeralds

46、 dcscription of them can be seen as a part of the symbolism used in the whole novel and it deeply reflects the writers serious thinking on the american social value the reason of the novels success is that different colors are adopted to portray different characters in the novel1 symbolic theme of t

47、he american drcamthe american dream is based on the ideology that each one can be successful through his own efforts and cultivating his qualitics it is the ideal of opportunity for all of advancement in a career or society without regarding to ones origin it is originally the dream has been ruined

48、by the unworthincss of its object-money and pleasure traditionally americans has sought to realize the american dream of success fate and wealth through thrift and hard work francis scott fitzgerald in the 1920s which is about disillusionment of american dream and it is still a piece of language end

49、owed with deep connotations and full of metaphors and mottoes fitzgcrald once summarized peoples characters at that time as all gods have died all the wars have been over and all the faiths have faded away fitzgerald 253 americcin people living in jazz age looked down on the traditional faiths and b

50、etrayed moralities and customs that their ancestors used to abide by the tradi tional model of american dream as many critics and writers pointed out were full of falsity especially under the condition of capitalism developed rapidly and polarization intensified incrcasi ngly it made a point of evid

51、ence that gat sby made a for tunc rel ying on personal virtues diligence and frugality it is the american dream but it is the origin of gatsbys dreamthe story of the great gatsby is a good illusion to symbolize the failure of the american dream the dream of beings rich and winning daisy back begins

52、the story but the novel end with gatsbys death the declining of the dream is well pictured the great gatsby shows the ambition of one mans reach for his american dream the disappointment of losing this dream and the despair of his loss the greatness of the great gatsby rests with the autobiography o

53、f fitzgerald himself his experience and his reflection through the unfolding of a doomed romance of a fervent dreamer in the dreamless wasteland of american twenties fitzgerald realized that the era of dreaming and the americcin dream is over at the end of the novel gatsbys lonely funeral ceremony a

54、nd peoples indifference completely reflected the american societys coolness and ugliness in 1920s in this society gatsby was destined to be isolatod helpless and to fail in all gatsby was one of typical representatives of american dream that all generations of american people pursued no matter how d

55、id gatsby struggle for it he could not get into the upper class society no matter how did he do hard he could not get daisy and her heart even if he tried his best effort to fulfill his dream he was destined to fail at last the tragedy of believer and followergatsby persistently seeking for american

56、 dream asserted the bankruptcy of american drcam conclusion gatsbys final dcstructivcncss was upper class society ruined his dream in spirit so we beat on boats on against the current born back ceaselessly into the past fitzgerald 215 owing to his innocence lacking of discerning power and self-compr

57、ehension gatsby fell into the trap that the social evil power set for him owing to his kindncss dctcrmined beliefs tense desire emd firm dccision he believed that he could build a real fairy-land doubtlessly the description of american drcam was perfect but the rcalistic world represented by tom and

58、 daisy was too absurd to withstand a single blow gatsbys lack of mind and discerning power led to his final destructivenesshis destructiveness was not only in physic but also in spirit it is human beings tragedyto some extent gatsbys love to daisy reflected his wonderful memory of the past gatsby co

59、uld not build his hope future on the basis of cruel reality he uniquely recalled the past only to make the past illusion take place of the reality and future he could not face squarely the real ity of uniting the past with the future in the rcalistic environment these reflect the essence of gatsbys dream he was obstinate in his mind actually he was not stupid but foolish doubtlessly it is inevitable that his american dream was disillusioned foolish character actually gatsby is a real f