worshiper, no longer the girl whom Gatsby has been fancy of.
• Through Nick's narration of the whole story and reveal of the change.The writer called for the regression of humanity and morality.
• In the whole story, Gatsby is the only person who still looks backwards and pursue ideal love despite of material factors.
• Daisy - She abandoned the past. • She now is merely a typical vanity
– inherited a large amount of money, and made money on illegal business
• Love
– failed reuniting with Daisy
The American Dream
Materially - wealth Spiritually - happiness
• The narrator, Nick, is also an irrationalism. He appreciates Gatsby in some aspect, and disdains the material chasing and coldness of the upper-class.
• He pursued unpractical love. The failure of Gatsby symbolizes the prominence and tendency of rationalism.
• His being about “the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty”(Chapter 6, P61) -- it also indicates that the break of blind and unpractical dreams of the American young men.
• Fitzgerald showed the contrast and conflict between rationalism and irrationalism. He showed preferance to irrationalism and emotion.
Gatsby's Idealism
Themes of
The Great Gatsby
• Dream -the bankruptcy of American Dream
• Change ("past")
• Rationalism vs. Irrationalism
Dream
• Gatsby
– wealth, love
• Wealth
• "past"
Change
– "so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
– "'I wouldn't ask too much of her,' I ventured. 'You can't repeat the past.' He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the sh his hand."
• "...I began to have a feeling of defiance, of scorful solidarity between Gatsby and me against them all."
• Daisy's ultimate decision to remain with her husband despite her feelings for Gatsby can be attributed to the status, security, and comfort that her marriage to Tom Buchanan provides.
Rationalism vs. Irrationalism
• The Americans lived under the influence of rationalism brought by technology break-through and the theory of "God is dead".
– "He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something" (chapter 6, p68~69)
• Gatsby lives in the shadow of the past (dreaming of reunion with Daisy; He retraced the places where he and Daisy had once stayed together.) and wants to get some things back to former states.
The writer embodied on Gatsby the feature of typical Americans. Thus, the failure of Gatsby symbolizes the confusion of Americans and the bankruptcy of American Dream.