研究《了不起的盖茨》中的“车”意象

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A Study on the Automobile Image in The Great Gatsby Abstract

Automobile among all the technological innovations brings great changes to the society and can be used typically to present Fitzgerald’s worry about the Jazz Age. The present paper intends to analyze the image of automobile in The Great Gatsby from a new perspective of sin. This present paper analyzes the three elements of sin, including motive, scene and cost to interpret the role of automobile in the novel. The three roles indicates that the tempting car can be a lure of sin, bring extreme expressions and cause great cost during the pursuit of cars. A conclusion that excessive pursuit of speed of development leads to the decline of humanity and even crime.58291

Keywords: F. Scott Fitzgerald; The Great Gatsby; Automobile; Image

研究《了不起的盖茨》中的“车”意象

摘要在所有科技产物中，汽车给社会带来了巨大的变化，同时也非常典型的体现了菲兹杰拉德对爵士时代的忧虑。本论文旨在从罪恶的角度来分析了不起的盖茨比中的汽车意象。本文将会根据罪恶的三元素，动机，表现和代价来解读汽车在小说中所扮演的角色。汽车所扮演的这三个角色说明在追求汽车的过程中，诱人的现代汽车能够成为罪恶的诱因，引起极端的表现并且造成巨大的代价。本文得出的结论是过度的追求事物的发展速度将会导致人性的缺失，甚至是犯罪行为。

毕业论文关键词：弗朗西斯·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德；了不起的盖茨比；汽车；意象

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby 1

1.2 Literature Review 1

1.3 Thesis Statement and Research Questions 3

1.4 Thesis Structure 3

2. “Tempting” Automobile: Motive of Sin 5

2.1 To Gatsby: A Tool to win back Daisy 5

2.2 To Tom and Daisy: A Symbol of Status and Wealth 6

2.3 To Guests : A Tool to Social Networking 6

2.4 To Wilson: A Way for Living 7

3 “Dirty” Automobile: Scene of Sin 8

3.1 An Evidence for Crime 8

3.2 A Hotbed for Moral Decay 9

4 “Fatal” Automobile: Cost of Sin 10

4.1 Death 10

4.2 Loss of spirituality 11

5 Conclusion 13

Bibliography 14

1. Introduction

1.1 F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that wins him tremendous fame. He was one of the most famous writer during the 1920s in American. He himself was an victim of his age. Born in St. Paul in the Middle West of America, Fitzgerald had experienced inferiority compared with his other classmates from the upper class in Princeton University. He did not finish school and joined the World War I. He was awarded as a second lieutenant and appointed to Alabama, where he engaged with Zelda from upper class. But this marriage was based on material success. Similar social experience made Fitzgerald’ s stories more relevant to readers in America at that time.

First published by Scribner's in April 1925, The Great Gatsby had a poor sale. It was not appreciated by many contemporaries but T.S. Eliot and Gertrud Stein. Not until World War II that the novel was widely appreciated by literary world and became so popular that adaptation was made into the movie in the following decades. It is a story of a man from the bottom of society tries to capture the love of his old lover who from upper class. The protagonist Jay Gatsby took illegal means to become wealthy but finally died of the irrational love in the luxury and dissipated society. Nowadays, The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a spokesman of the “Jazz Age”. In 1998 the Modern Library editorial board voted it the 20th century's best American novel and second best English-language novel of the same time period. The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the Lost Generation. The novel sets in a background of post World War I, but its influence is in prevalence with age. Critics and scholars never abandon The Great Gatsby and stress its significance all the time.