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（成都理工大学广播影视学院四川成都611745）
Abstract: The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s finest novel, which was published in 1925, and Eliot considered it “to be the first step that America has taken since Henry James”. It is a sensitive and symbolic treatment of themes of contemporary life related with irony and pathos to the legendry of “American dream”. In this novel, Fitzgerald used many techniques: the controlled and detached point of view, the crafted structure and symbolism, all these distinguish The Great Gatsby from the style of his earlier works.
However, in this paper I want to present my ideas of the symbolism in The Great Gatsby. During my presentation, I have quoted some materials from critics to support my arguments. In the conclusion part, I also repeat my own opinion: the significant symbolism made The Great Gatsby the “small” masterpiece of American literature.
Key words: The Great Gatsby; the symbolism
中图分类号：G644.5A
The Great Gatsby is rich in symbolism which functions on several levels and in a variety of ways. One of the most important qualities of Fitzgerald’s symbolism is the way it is fully integrated into the plot and structure, so that the symbols seems naturally to grow out of the action rather than existing as mere abstractions.
1 The East and West
In one sense, the moral conflict in this novel is resolved into a conflict between East and West—the ancient and corrupt East and the raw but virtuous West. Nick Carraway attributes his moral attitude to his Middle Western background. At the end of the story, he asserts, “I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly inadaptable to Eastern life”. It is perhaps subtly significant that Tom and Daisy live in East Egg, since they are really better adapted to Eastern life than Nick and Gatsby, who live in West Egg. Nick’s experience in the East results in his return with relief to the West: “After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes, power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home”. “Back home,” it seems clear, is a place where the fundamental decencies are observed and virtue is honored.
2 The gigantic eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg
The gigantic eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which “brood on over the solemn dumping ground,” also take on greater meaning along with the valley of ashes. When Wilson, after his wife’s death, informs Michaelis of his earlier suspicions of her, he gazes out the window.
Just as Wilson comes half-consciously to identify the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg with God, so the reader gradually becomes aware of them as representing some kind of detached intellect, brooding gloomily over life in the bleak waste land surrounding it, and presiding fatalistically over the little tragedy enacted as if in sacrifice before it.
3 Light and color
The colors yellow and blue are the most significant; they best reflect the fundamental duality of Fitzgerald’s imaginary world. They are usually linked in such a way that their contrast underlines the nature of a given situation or moment. Their conjunction seems to be the sign of a fleeting instant of harmony and beauty, whereas their dissociation suggests disorder or latent conflict. There is nothing pat or preestablished about the effects they engender. Blue can be cold or tender or sentimental, yellow ardent or powerful or destructive, and these are just some of the associations that seem obvious. But their “meaning” is never frozen into an allegorical hierarchy. Glowing within a constellation of other symbols, a color can serve as a leitmotiv. For example, Gatsby, whose innermost nature is stamped by the influence of the moon, of water, of night, is associated with blue, the blue of the grass in his lawns and of his servants’ uniforms. But the image he shows the world, a false one, is deliberately given a golden, sunlit gleam, as in is luxurious yellow automobile. Tom Buchanan is subject to no such ambiguity: he is determinedly sunny, aggressively sure of his power, a study, straw-haired man of thirty whom is first seen in the book standing booted and solid before his French windows as they glint with the gold of the setting sun. Fitzgerald’s use of color is purely descriptive, but rarely did he fail to aim at another reality beneath the surface. If there is one area in Fitzgerald’s work in which the realism is no more than a façade, it is in his use of color and light.
Bibliography:
[1]Bruccoli, J. Matthew, New Essays on The Great Gatsby. Cambridge: The Univ. Pr., 1985.
[2]Carey, Gary, ed. The Great Gatsby: Notes. Nebraska: Cliffs Notes, 1996.
[3]Cooperman, Stanley. F. Scott. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. New York:Simon & Schuster, 1996.
[4]Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Crack-up. Ed. Edmund Wilson. New York: New Directions, 1945.
[5]Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1926.
[6]Griffith, Kelley. Writing Essays about Literature: A Guide and Style Sheet. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998.
[7]Twentieth-Century Literature Criticism. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1994.
Abstract: The Great Gatsby is Fitzgerald’s finest novel, which was published in 1925, and Eliot considered it “to be the first step that America has taken since Henry James”. It is a sensitive and symbolic treatment of themes of contemporary life related with irony and pathos to the legendry of “American dream”. In this novel, Fitzgerald used many techniques: the controlled and detached point of view, the crafted structure and symbolism, all these distinguish The Great Gatsby from the style of his earlier works.
However, in this paper I want to present my ideas of the symbolism in The Great Gatsby. During my presentation, I have quoted some materials from critics to support my arguments. In the conclusion part, I also repeat my own opinion: the significant symbolism made The Great Gatsby the “small” masterpiece of American literature.
Key words: The Great Gatsby; the symbolism
中图分类号：G644.5A
The Great Gatsby is rich in symbolism which functions on several levels and in a variety of ways. One of the most important qualities of Fitzgerald’s symbolism is the way it is fully integrated into the plot and structure, so that the symbols seems naturally to grow out of the action rather than existing as mere abstractions.
1 The East and West
In one sense, the moral conflict in this novel is resolved into a conflict between East and West—the ancient and corrupt East and the raw but virtuous West. Nick Carraway attributes his moral attitude to his Middle Western background. At the end of the story, he asserts, “I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all—Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly inadaptable to Eastern life”. It is perhaps subtly significant that Tom and Daisy live in East Egg, since they are really better adapted to Eastern life than Nick and Gatsby, who live in West Egg. Nick’s experience in the East results in his return with relief to the West: “After Gatsby’s death the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes, power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home”. “Back home,” it seems clear, is a place where the fundamental decencies are observed and virtue is honored.
2 The gigantic eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg
The gigantic eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which “brood on over the solemn dumping ground,” also take on greater meaning along with the valley of ashes. When Wilson, after his wife’s death, informs Michaelis of his earlier suspicions of her, he gazes out the window.
Just as Wilson comes half-consciously to identify the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg with God, so the reader gradually becomes aware of them as representing some kind of detached intellect, brooding gloomily over life in the bleak waste land surrounding it, and presiding fatalistically over the little tragedy enacted as if in sacrifice before it.
3 Light and color
The colors yellow and blue are the most significant; they best reflect the fundamental duality of Fitzgerald’s imaginary world. They are usually linked in such a way that their contrast underlines the nature of a given situation or moment. Their conjunction seems to be the sign of a fleeting instant of harmony and beauty, whereas their dissociation suggests disorder or latent conflict. There is nothing pat or preestablished about the effects they engender. Blue can be cold or tender or sentimental, yellow ardent or powerful or destructive, and these are just some of the associations that seem obvious. But their “meaning” is never frozen into an allegorical hierarchy. Glowing within a constellation of other symbols, a color can serve as a leitmotiv. For example, Gatsby, whose innermost nature is stamped by the influence of the moon, of water, of night, is associated with blue, the blue of the grass in his lawns and of his servants’ uniforms. But the image he shows the world, a false one, is deliberately given a golden, sunlit gleam, as in is luxurious yellow automobile. Tom Buchanan is subject to no such ambiguity: he is determinedly sunny, aggressively sure of his power, a study, straw-haired man of thirty whom is first seen in the book standing booted and solid before his French windows as they glint with the gold of the setting sun. Fitzgerald’s use of color is purely descriptive, but rarely did he fail to aim at another reality beneath the surface. If there is one area in Fitzgerald’s work in which the realism is no more than a façade, it is in his use of color and light.
Bibliography:
[1]Bruccoli, J. Matthew, New Essays on The Great Gatsby. Cambridge: The Univ. Pr., 1985.
[2]Carey, Gary, ed. The Great Gatsby: Notes. Nebraska: Cliffs Notes, 1996.
[3]Cooperman, Stanley. F. Scott. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. New York:Simon & Schuster, 1996.
[4]Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Crack-up. Ed. Edmund Wilson. New York: New Directions, 1945.
[5]Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1926.
[6]Griffith, Kelley. Writing Essays about Literature: A Guide and Style Sheet. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998.
[7]Twentieth-Century Literature Criticism. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1994.