The Contrast Skills in The Great Gatsby
姓名：彭莉 班级：09英语1班 学号：超虐小说20091801310019
Abstract: The Great Gatsby is the best novel of F.Scott. Fitzgerald. As a novel with strong tragic flavor, it keeps in step with the time and its criticism of America society is really penetrating.The novel shows the disillusion of “American Dream” in the 1920s.In The Great Gatsby, there exist so many contract skills, such as the east vs. the west, the contrast of the main characters, the contract between dream and reality and so on. And in this paper, I mainly put emphasis on the above aspects. The contrast skills not only furnish the novel with artistic glamor and profound connotation, but also show that Gatsby's failure is destined.
Key Words: contrast skills; 李文忠F. Scott Fitzgerald; American Dream; conflict
Introduction
夏枯
The great Gatsby deeply shows that under the materialism environment, in any ca, Gatsb
y would have failed to his idealistic dream inevitably, namely disillusion of American dream. Meanwhile, the novel also shows that the materialism way gets no access to a perfect country. Instead, it leads total corruption.
The contrast skills
1 The East vs. the West
The moral conflict in the novel is resolved into a conflict between East and West----the ancient and corrupt East and the raw but virtuous West. Nick attributes his moral attitude to his Middle Western background. 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.”(Chapter 9) “Home”, which ems clear, is a place where the fundamental manners are obrved and virtue is honored. The East is a reprentation of sophistication and moral degradation while the West is the embodiment of virtue and har
mony.
In the novel, the author created the East Egg and the West Egg who geographical contrast shows the conflicts of different values.
Their physical similarity must be a source of eternal confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless, a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilation in every particular except shape and size.
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The Buchanans live in white palaces of fashionable East Egg while Gatsby and Nick who come to New York to deal with bond business live in less fashionable West Egg. East Egg is a paradi for upper-class society. It’s more degraded and unmoral. However, West Egg symbolizes hope, promi and renascence.
2 The contrast of main characters
Gatsby is nsitive and idealistic, almost divine in his dedication to his love and faith. Although his wealth came from his criminal activities, Gatsby manages to hold the readers’ sympathy throughout. The whole-hearted dedication of Gatsby and his sincere bqq怎么发邮件
elief in what he does make him heroic, and this submerges the unpleasant details so that they don’t em important in the final outcome.
Compared with Gatsby, Tom is immoral and sly. “They are careless people,” as Nick describes them, “Tom and Daisy----they smashed up things and creature and then retreated back into their money or their carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess----they had made.” Tom is more sophisticated. When he finds that things are not moving to his favor, he is determined to arrange things to suit himlf, no matter whom he hurts in the process. He makes Gatsby bear the responsibility for Myrtle’s death. So Tom does not only destroy Gatsby’s dream, but also Gatsby’s life.
洗发水Nick Caraway is nsitive and intelligent; he alters his evaluation of others as he learns more about them. He prerves a rational mind that makes him realize what is wrong with Gatsby. Gatsby, on the other hand, is idealistic and romantic. His personality remains unchanging and static. His view of life remains one-sided and unreal at the end. For Gats
by, the material world has always been visionaland only the world of dreams esntially real. His dream is timeless and incorruptible, but the woman and the world to which he weds his dream are both mortal and corrupted. So his dream is doomed to fail.
3 The contrast between dream and reality
The most conspiring contrast in this novel is the conflict between dream and reality. American dream means that in America one might hope to satisfy every material desire and thereby achieve happiness.
The cruel reality smashed Gatsby’s dream. Fitzgerald’s comment on the failure of Gatsby’s dream is also a statement on the failure of American dream. The contrast of the dream and the reality significantly indicates a moving away from faith and hope in a world where material interests have driven out ntimentality and faith. What is more, dream, even if it persists, is utterly helpless and defenless against a material society. It can only be defeated. Gatsby is an example. Owing to his unrealistic dream, Gatsby’s fate turns out to be a tragedy. Becau he isn’t conscious of his unrealistic dream of love and
he doesn’t correctly handle contradictions between ideal and reality, Gatsby sinks into this kind of unreal dream so deeply that he can’t wake up. And the final result of Gatsby is surely mirable怎么知道自己的五行属性
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