F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby

Teaching Outline • Jazz Age • American Dream • Lost Generation • F. Scott Fitzgerald • The Great Gatsby

Jazz Age • The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has lived on in American pop culture for decades. With the introduction of jazz came an entirely new cultural movement in places like the United States, France and England. The birth of jazz music is often accredited to African Americans. Areas like New York and Chicago were cultural centers for jazz, and especially for African American artists.

Blues • 布鲁斯（又译蓝调(blues)，港台常译为“怨曲”）是一种基于五声音阶的声乐和乐器音乐，它的另一个特点是其特殊的和声。布鲁斯是南北战争后，在黑人民间产生的一种演唱形式，它与黑人的种植园歌曲（劳动时集体合唱的无伴奏歌曲）有着一脉相承的关系。布鲁斯起源于过去美国黑人奴隶的圣歌、赞美歌、劳动歌曲、叫喊和颂歌。布鲁斯中使用的“蓝调之音”和启应的演唱方式都显示了它的西非来源。

American Dream • The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. • In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth. • The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The iconic symbol

The Lost Generation • The Lost Generation is a term used to describe a group of American writers who were rebelling against what America had become by the 1900’s. At this point in time, America had become a great place to, “go into some area of business” (Crunden, 185). However, the Lost Generation writers felt that America was not such a success story because the country was devoid of a cosmopolitan culture. Their solution to this issue was to pack up their bags and travel to Europe’s cosmopolitan cultures, such as Paris and London. Here they expected to find literary freedom and a cosmopolitan way of life.

Who are involved?

Fitagerald’s Time • After the World War I • The Great Depression • Traditional Puritan Values have begun to collapsed • Hedonism became a fasion • “这是一个奇迹的时代，一个艺术的时代，一个挥金如土的时代，也是一个充满嘲讽的时代。” ___ by Fitzgerald

About the Author (1896-1940) F. Scott Fitagerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 24, 1896. the influence of his father’s upper class manners and poor mother’s manners The legacy from his grandfather provided him with an expensive education in private schools at Princeton. But due to illness and neglect of academic study, he left the university in 1917 without graduation. Then he accepted an army commission and spent fifteen months of service in the southern state of Alabama.

In 1920, the first novel This Side of Paradise was published. The novel won for him not only wealth and fame but also the expensive prize of Zelda Sayre, the beautiful and light-hearted daughter of a prominent judge. She has been regarded as the prototype of a series of rich, beautiful women who figure so prominently in his fiction. After marriage, the couple often went abroad and lived extravagantly a luxurious life.

The 1930s brought relentless decline for Fitzgerald with a series of misfortunes: his reputation declined, his wealth fell, his health failed, Zelda had suffered from some serious mental breakdowns. Alcoholism, loneliness and despair combined to ruin him. He died in 1940 of a heart attack, leaving his last novel The Last Tycoon unfinished.

His Major Works • The Side of Paradise (1920) 人间天堂 • The Beautiful and Dammed (1922) 美女和被诅咒的人 • The Great Gatsby (1925) 了不起的盖茨比 • Tender is the Night (1934) 夜色温柔 • The Last Tycoon最后一个大亨

Settings in The Great Gatsby West Egg- where Nick and Gatsby live, represents new money East Egg- where Daisy lives, the more fashionable area, represents old money The story is set against the ending of the war

Lead-in Questions • Who was the narrator of the novel ? What’s the function? Did Nick feel lost in the story? • Examine the title again, do you think that Gatsby is great? • Why did Gatsby hold parties every Saturday night? Were the guests invited ? Did they know each other ? What can you learn from this? • How do you look at the American dream refelcted in this novel?

Plot Overview in The Great Gatsby Nick moves from the midwest to New York City in order to pursue a career in bonds Nick begins a friendship with his cousin, Daisy Nick befriends his neighbor, Jay Gatsby

Plot Overview in The Great Gatsby Nick reunites Daisy with her former lover, Gatsby Daisy’s husband, Tom, discovers his wife’s affair A trip into the City results in the death of Tom’s lover, Myrtle, when she ran out in front of a car Daisy was driving

Plot Overview in The Great Gatsby Gatsby takes the responsibility for Daisy. Tom tells Myrtle’s husband George, that Gatsby killed Myrtle George kills Gatsby No one but Nick comes to Gatsby’s funeral Tom and Daisy leave town

Characters of The Great Gatsby Jay Gatsby The title character and protagonist of the novel, Gatsby is a fabulously wealthy young man living in a Gothic mansion in West Egg. He is famous for the lavish parties he throws every Saturday night, but no one knows where he comes from, what he does, or how he made his fortune. His urgent goal is to win Daisy’s love back from Tom. So, he holds parties, arranges meetings with Daisy and even takes the responsibility for Daisy. But what’s the result ?

Nick Carraway—an omniscent narrator Nick-- the narrator, Daisy’s cousin, Gatsby’s neighbor. Nick is a young man from Minnesota who, after being educated at Yale and fighting in World War I, goes to New York City to learn the bond business. Honest, tolerant, and inclined to reserve judgment, Nick often serves as a confidant for those with troubling secrets. After moving to West Egg, a fictional area of Long Island that is home to the newly rich, Nick quickly befriends his next-door neighbor, the mysterious Jay Gatsby.

As Daisy Buchanan's cousin, he facilitates the rekindling of the romance between her and Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is told entirely through Nick's eyes; his thoughts and perceptions shape and color the story. • (Nick perceived the unhappy marriage between Tom and Daisy, the nostalgic love between Gatsby and Daisy, the lavish and vulgar life of the upper class)

Daisy Buchanan (snnobish, selfish) Daisy Buchanan- Nick's cousin, and the woman Gatsby loves, married to Tom. As a young woman in Louisville before the war, Daisy was courted by a number of officers, including Gatsby. She fell in love with Gatsby and promised to wait for him. However, Daisy harbors a deep need to be loved, and when a wealthy, powerful young man named Tom Buchanan asked her to marry him, Daisy decided not to wait for Gatsby after all.

Now a beautiful socialite, Daisy lives with Tom across from Gatsby in the fashionable East Egg district of Long Island. She is sardonic and somewhat cynical, and behaves superficially to mask her pain at her husband's constant infidelity.

Tom (evil, disloyal, hypocritical) • A wealthy, unintelligent, brutal playboy. He should be responsible for Daisy’s disloyalty and Gatsby’s tragic fate. • First, Tom was disloyal to his family. As a married man, he had love affairs with Myrtle, a married woman. (disloyal) • Second, when Daisy was troubled by the traffic accident, he shifted the responsibility to Gatsby, which led to Wilson’d revenge of Gatsby. (evil)

Analysis of the Major Characters • Gatsby: wealthy, living in illusion, pursuing his so-called dream (to be rich, to find his love back). • Daisy: snobbish, money-admirer, indifferent, false in love affair. • Nick: a typical young man in “Lost genenration” and got lost in “Jazz Age”

Chapter 3 • At the beginning of this chapter, Gatsby’s party brings 1920s wealth and glamour into full focus, showing the upper class at its most lavishly opulent. • In this scenario, Gatsby is again an enigma—though he lives in a garishly ostentatious West Egg mansion, East Eggers freely attend his parties. Despite the tensions between the two groups, the blend of East and West Egg creates a distinctly American mood.

Fitzgerald has delayed the introduction of the novel’s most important figure—Gatsby himself—until the beginning of Chapter 3. The reader has seen Gatsby from a distance, heard other characters talk about him, and listened to Nick’s thoughts about him, but has not actually met him (nor has Nick). Chapter 3 is devoted to the introduction of Gatsby and the lavish, showy world he inhabits

Fitzgerald gives Gatsby a suitably grand entrance as the aloof host of a spectacularly decadent party. Despite this introduction, this chapter continues to heighten the sense of mystery and enigma that surrounds Gatsby, as the low profile he maintains seems curiously out of place with his lavish expenditures.

What are Gatsby’s Greatness? • Gatsby is a person with double character (round) • a practioner of American dream (to satisfy his vanity in material desire, but fail to achieve the essence of American dream) • His firm love for Daisy (to find his love back, to be a scapegoat for Daisy, but repaid little from Daisy) • As readers, we should look at Gatsby objectively (criticized and pitied)

Gatsby’s American Dream • dream of wealth and dream of love • Dream of wealth:. But his mansion and fabulous entertainment are financed by bootlegging and other criminal activities. • Dream of love: Love is merely a vehicle that can transport him to a magic world of eternal happiness.

The man’s real dream, is that of achieving a new status and a new essence, of rising to a loftier place in the mysterious hierarchy of human worth. • Gatsby’s pursuit of his dream only proves to be futile since what he seeks is nothing but an illusion.

Disillusion of American Dream • He was accused by Tom of his illegal behaviour in making his fortune. • He was revenged by George Wilson. While Daisy and Tom fled to Europe for travel without feeling gratituded for “his generous deeds”. • His tragic destiny reflects the tragedy of the Jazz age and the Lost Generation.

Theme of the novel • The breakdown of American Dream “An incorruptible dream is smashed into pieces by the relentless reality” • The Hollowness and hypocrisy of the Upper Class

F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby