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Up till now, when critics or scholars mention Gatsby’s parties in their researches, they usually interpret them from two aspects. One is the purpose of the parties and the other is the symbolic meaning. They agree that the main reason for Gatsby to hold these extravagant parties is to attract Daisy and win her back. Meanwhile, it is a kind of approach to allow him to be recognized and become one member of the upper class. They also regard parties as the symbol of materialism of American Dream. However, few researchers have ever attempted on the symbol of parties to decode the spirit of the Jazz Age. Therefore, the paper tries to analyze the lavish parties in The Great Gatsby to explore the spirit of the Jazz Age. The thesis of the paper is that the lavish parties symbolize the spirit of the Jazz Age.
2. The Spirit of the Jazz Age
Generally speaking, the spirit of an age is embodied in the spirit of people in that age. So the spirit of the Jazz Age is the spirit of the people of the Jazz Age.
In American history, the Jazz Age was a period from the ending of WWⅠ(1918) to the Great Depression(1929). “This is both an age of vain and pleasure and an age when people, especially young people generally felt perplexed and lost.” (Ma Xinguo 2002) America was involved in the war and people finally realized the battle cry “fighting for the democracy” was just a cover for the government. (Chen Jing 2011) After the war, people no longer believed the government but meanwhile they could not find a new spiritual support, so they began to feel lost and depressed. At that moment, America entered an unprecedented prosperous age. Economy was flouring as never before which drove people to chasing a more materialized and hedonic life. And optimism bred in the whole society. People tried to completely say goodbye to the traditional religious belief and morality because they thought these things have been obstacles on their way to pursue so-called better life. In their blueprint of a better life, people were going to identify a person’s social status by his wealth and the ability of consumption, behave themselves according to the material pursuit and hedonism. As a result, they became immoral, inhumanity, snobbish, selfish and materialized. In the meantime, they felt lonely, empty and anxiety arising from alienation between man and his mind, man and society, and man and man. However, we should still see that it is temporary. Human beings’ nature will finally pull them back and realize self-salvation.
Therefore, the spirit of the Jazz Age is the spiritual state of the Jazz Age’s man which indicates as spiritual emptiness, materialized spirit, alienated spirit and self-salvation.