摘 要

《了不起的盖茨比》是美国著名小说家弗•斯科特•菲茨杰拉德的代表作。小说的男主人公盖茨比为了追求自己心目中的美国梦，采取各种非法手段，不惜一切代价。再加上当时的美国处于爵士时代，拜金主义和享乐主义的社会风尚盛行，最终导致盖茨比美国梦的破灭。本论文主要探讨盖茨比的悲剧根源，发现导致盖茨比悲剧根源的主要原因包括：当时的社会背景、阶级差别；盖茨比对金钱，爱情和社会地位的不切实际的追求以及以黛西为代表的人们的虚荣和冷漠。盖茨比的美国梦，实际上是“物质化”了的美国梦，它的破灭，是必然的结局。美国爵士时代人们对梦想盲目追逐，却忽视了对精神世界的追求。此外，《了不起的盖茨比》对当代人也有很重要的警示作用。随着经济的发展，贫富差距悬殊，现在也有很多人为了追求财富和地位，采用违法手段谋取财富，重复着像盖茨比一样的悲剧结局。通过此论文，希望提醒人们在追求物质财富的同时，也要注重精神方面的满足，切记不要把物质财富当作全部的梦想与追求。

关键词：《了不起的盖茨比》；美国梦；悲剧根源

ABSTRACT

The Great Gatsby is regarded as the American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. In this novel, the hero Gatsby takes a variety of illegal means to pursue his American dream at all cost. At that time, American society was in the jazz age, money worship and hedonism became a kind of social fashion, which also leads to the disillusionment of Gatsby’s American dream. This paper attempts to analyze The Great Gatsby from the perspective of Gatsby’s tragic roots: social background of America and class distinctions at that time; Gatsby’s unrealistic pursuit of money, social position and love; and the vanity and selfishness of people like Daisy. Gatsby’s American dream is actually a dream of “substance” which means its disillusionment is an inevitable outcome. One of the reasons is that people chased dreams blindly in the age of Jazz, but they often tended to ignore the spiritual world. In addition, this paper also has promising implications for modern people. With the development of economy, the widening gap between the poor and the rich is a worldwide phenomenon. Numerous people repeat Gatsby’s tragedy in their pursuit of wealth and status by illegal means. What’s more, money worship and material enjoyment prevailing in 1920s begins to spread now, and this tendency is growing much greater.
This paper aims to remind people that in the pursuit of material wealth, we should pay attention to spiritual satisfaction, as well as the theme of moral reconstruction and remember not to treat the material wealth as all the dreams and pursuits.

Key worlds: The Great Gatsby; American dream; tragic roots