了不起的盖茨比英语毕业论文(10)

and live with her forever.

2.2.2 Nick Carraway’s American Dream

In this novel, we see disorientation in achieving the American Dream in Gatsby, while in Nick Carraway, the narrator, we see a far more rational mind in dealing with this. Nick Carraway was made in the book the representative of the traditional moral codes of America. He comes from the Midwest and wants to make money in the Long Island. For he is also attracted by the beauty, the wealth, and the sophistication of “the wasteland”, so at any rate, he is another dream seeker. However as witnessing Gatsby’s tragedy, he realizes what has gone wrong with American dream from the beginning to the end. Thanks to the traditional moral conducts that rooted in him and his following his father’s advice on toleration, he never get lost. Finally, he got the essential emptiness of American dream and achieves the penetration of Tom and Daisy’s corruption, grossness, and cowardice. Nick does not make quick judgment, and thus is able to gain access to “many curious natures” The world of Gatsby is inhabited in main by three groups of people and Nick has contact with them all. So the function of Nick in this book can never be ignored. He is there to make the readers understand the roles in this book from an objective point of view and then get better comprehension of Gatsby’s idealized love and the reality of the society. Both Nick and Gatsby in this novel emerge as moral symbol: Gatsby as the embodiment of spiritual desolation or waste, Nick as a hope for moral and spiritual growth.

2.2.3 Tom, Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker’s American Dream

In this book, Tom, Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker represent the corruption of American dream. Comparing with Gatsby, they were born with wealth and status but devoid of purpose. Daisy’s lament is especially indicative of this: “What will we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and the day after that, and the next thirty years?”(Fitzgerald, 1).

Daisy Buchanan, is the dream and cause of his wasted dream. As a representative of those women who are not expected to be well educated, to work, and have developed a kind of parasitic dependency. Daisy is, however, physically attractive, romantic, and sentimental,