Abstract

     F. Scott Fitzgerald is the spokesman of “the Jazz Age”. Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period. This paper aims to explore the development and disillusionment of the American Dream by analyzing the development and disillusionment of Gatsby’s American Dream, and by discussing what eventually makes Gatsby the victim of the American Dream, in order to reveal the inevitability of the decline of the American Dream.

Key words: The Great Gatsby, American Dream, disillusionment, inevitability

摘 要

    弗朗西斯•斯科特•菲茨杰拉德是美国“爵士时代” 的代言人，《了不起的盖茨比》写于1925年，是那个时期最伟大的文学性文献之一。本篇论文旨在通过分析盖茨比所代表的美国梦以及盖茨比的美国梦的发展与破灭来探讨美国梦的发展与破灭,概括和总结最终导致盖茨比成为美国梦的牺牲品的原因，揭示“美国梦”破灭的必然性。

关键词：《了不起的盖茨比》，美国梦，破灭，必然性

1.    Introduction
     It is undeniable that F. Scott Fitzgerald is the most famous chronicler of the 1920s’ America, an era that he dubbed “the Jazz Age”. Fitzgerald greatly employs the technique of semi-autobiography throughout his works, and he makes a breakthrough in creating refreshing literature images of women. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became an established literary figure in the USA. After the successive publications of The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night, he earned enough money and fame. However, Fitzgerald passed away at age 44 before he could complete The Love of the Last Tycoon. Luckily his manuscript was edited by his friend, Edmund Wilson, a literary critic, and got published posthumously as The Last Tycoon.
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, and the young generation were suspicious about the traditional notions and started breaking out the “Victorian gentility” (The Sad Young Man 148), looking forward to a kind of luxuriant life. Commonly deemed as the epitome of Jazz Age, this novel is “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James” (Letter to Scott Fitzgerald 310) and a trying depiction of the realization and disillusionment of the American Dream.