Transcript The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Major Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald
This Side of Paradise (1920)
 Flappers and Philosophers (1920)
 Tales of Jazz Age (1922)
 The Beautiful and Damned (1922)
 The Great Gatsby (1925)
 Tender Is the Night (1934)
 The Last Tycoon (1941)

What Is Happiness?

Some people who seem to have nothing are very
happy. Some people who seem to have everything
are not happy.

Some rich people feel happy while some poor
people feel unhappy.

Some self-sacrificing volunteers are not happy
while some seemingly selfish people feel happy.

If wealth and morality do not necessarily bring
happiness, what then?
Characters in The Great Gatsby
West Egg
 Jay Gatsby
 Nick Carraway
East Egg
 Daisy Buchanan
 Tom Buchanan
 Jordan Baker
Valley of Ashes
 Mr. Wilson
 Mrs. Wilson (Myrtle Wilson)
Are they happy?
Mr. & Mrs. Wilson
Mr. Wilson’s garage business doesn’t run well; he’s
not able to reach wife’s standard.
 Mrs. Wilson feels cheated right after the wedding
and has been having an extra-marital affair which
is a superficial sexual relationship – quarrel with
Tom
 Mr. Wilson is deeply hurt when he finds his wife’s
betrayal and completely breaks down when his
wife gets killed by the car in her desperate effort
to get free of him.

Tom & Daisy Buchanan
Tom Buchanan: having affairs with other women
all the time despite his marriage;
- quarrel and fight with his mistresses;
- not happy about Daisy’s affair with Gatsby;
- not happy about the rise of colored people
 Daisy: bored; showing no real feeling for her
husband, her cousin and Gatsby

Jordan Baker

Bored like Daisy, having to find ways to
kill time
- attending parties
- playing golf (dishonest way)
- dating with people whom she doesn’t
care for
Nick Carraway

A sincere and honest young man
- finding it hard to accept insincere /
irresponsible people like Daisy, Tom and
Jordan Baker
- not happy about people’s coldheartedness to Gatsby in spite of all his
hospitality and kindness
- not happy about Daisy’s careless
treatment of Gatsby’s deep love for her
Jay Gatsby

Lonely - pursuing a dream all alone with nobody
around him understanding it except Nick, a new
acquaintance
- Meyer Wolfsheim: pure business partner
- father: not even knowing his son’s change of his
surname
- guests and party-goers: indifferent, haven’t even
met Gatsby
- Daisy: not caring for a person from Nowhere
like Gatsby, loving gayety only
Jay Gatsby

Happy
- having obtained wealth through hard work
though not honest work (bootlegging was
illegal)
- having had the woman he loves back in his
arms by that wealth
- is immersed in the exciting prospect of
getting married with the woman he loves
and possessing her forever though that
prospect is illusive and unreal
Happiness is
An emotion to be enjoyed and
experienced
 Not sth. to be possessed
 A long lasting enduring enjoyment of life
 Being in love with living
 Not merely moments of pleasure

What brings happiness?
Not wealth, not lover, not pleasure /
gayety
 Self-fulfillment – achievement of one’s
values, and genuine self-esteem
- values include productive career,
romance, positive relationship such as
friendship, hobbies, etc.
 Optimistic attitude towards things

Merriam-Webster’s Online
Dictionary definition of Happiness
a state of well-being and contentment
 a pleasurable or satisfying experience

Quotations (1)

Happiness is when what you think, what you
say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mahatma Gandhi

Happiness is essentially a state of going
somewhere, wholeheartedly, one-directionally,
without regret or reservation.
William H. Sheldon
Quotations (2)

Happiness is something that you are and it
comes from the way you think.
Wayne Dyer

Happiness is the spiritual experience of living
every minute with love, grace and gratitude.
Denis Waitley
Quotations (3)

Happiness is that state of consciousness which
proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.
Ayn Rand

Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness
has something to do with struggling and
enduring and accomplishing.
George Sheehan
Quotations (4)

Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a
manner of traveling.
Margaret Lee Runbeck

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose
of life, the whole aim and end of human
existence.
Aristotle
Is Gatsby Great?
Yes, he is great because he has the great
capacity to dream and to transform his
dream into reality.
 No, …

Green light




Everything Daisy represents
Sth. Gatsby looks forward to, the hope of his
life, the object he works hard and strives for
The dream of Gatsby’s life: possession of
beauty, wealth, social status, love and
happiness
The dream that one day Gatsby can sit side
by side with Daisy at a home of their own
which is unrealistic and impossible
Gatsby’s Schedule
Gatsby’s determination to realize his dream of
rising up in the society which promises equal
opportunity for everyone to succeed
 But Gatsby’s dream is a decayed American
dream because he takes the shortcut, the
criminal path to success and because he takes
money and social status as the ultimate goal and
only content of success.

Jazz Age / Roaring Twenties
Economic prosperity – a consumer society,
booming business with market for radios,
home appliances, synthetic textiles and
plastics; huge profits; businessman a popular
hero (Henry Ford and his Model T)
 An age of materialism - giddy from sudden
wealth, people partied and spent money
recklessly
 Hedonism – pleasure seeking, material
wealth, heavy drinking, casual sex

American Dream





Land of Opportunity
Rags to Riches—Anyone can become rich,
famous, powerful.
Jobs and education available to all who want
them.
Meritocracy (rewards) = skill + effort.
Through hard work, courage, and determination
one can achieve prosperity. Americans can live
better than their parents did.
James Adams coined the phrase
“American Dream” in his 1931 book
Epic of America:
“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which
life should be better and richer and fuller for every man,
with opportunity for each according to ability or
achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European
upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of
us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is
not a dream of motor cars and high wages
merely, but a dream of social order in which each
man and each woman shall be able to attain to
the fullest stature of which they are innately
capable, and be recognized by others for what
they are, regardless of the fortuitous
circumstances of birth or position.”
—James Adams
American dream & Communism

Marx’s description of Communist society
is the complete self-realization of every
one.
Gatsby & American dream


Realistic aspect of American dream: The
American dream helped promote the early
growth and prosperity of the U.S.
But in the process of American economic
development, Americans attach too much
importance to achievements and wealth in
their evaluation of an individual’s value that
leads to mammonism and the distorted
pursuit of wealth and achievement.
Gatsby & American dream

That has something to do with the origin
of the American dream. Early Puritans
went to the U.S. to built “a holy city of
God” thinking of themselves as the
chosen people of God. They think
whoever achieves success is elect by
God.
Gatsby & American dream

In contemporary China, a person who has
earned big money through real estate
investment judged others who haven’t
earned as much money to be the “loser”.
Gatsby & American dream
Unreal / illusive aspect: Gatsby in the
novel is immersed in the illusive
“American dream” whether this
“American dream” is social status, money
or beautiful woman and has paid his real
life in this illusive process. But he thinks all
this is real and his experience is all true.
 The question is: Is Gatsby happy?

Reader’s favorite quotes


Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not
through her own fault, but because of the
colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone
beyond her, beyond everything (p. 97,
Chapter 5).
黛西远不如他梦想中那么好 —— 这倒不
是她本人的过错, 而是由于他的幻想过于
精彩,这种幻想已经超越了她的本身, 超越
了一切东西。
Reader’s favorite quotes

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a
man when he is alive and not after he is
dead,” he [Meyer Wolfsheim] suggested.
“After that my own rule is to let everything
alone.” (陶洁，p. 158，Chapter 9）

咱们大家都应当学会在朋友活着的时候讲
交情, 而不要等到他死了之后, 在人去世以
后, 我个人的原则是不管闲事。
Reader’s favorite quotes


They were careless people. Tom and Daisy –
they smashed up things and creatures and
then retreated back into their money or
their vast carelessness … (陶洁，p. 161-162，
Chapter 9）
汤姆和黛西,他们是不负责任的人-他们砸
碎了东西, 把别人给毁了, 然后就退缩到自
己的金钱或者麻木不仁、 漫不经心当中...
Comments
... his finest novel, sensitive and symbolic
treatment of themes of contemporary life related
with irony and pathos to the legendry of the
American dream.
 ---The Oxford Companion to American Literature

《了不起的盖茨比》是他（菲茨杰拉德）最好
的小说，该书敏锐地抓住了当代社会生活的主
题，并以象征手法展现了“美国梦”传奇之下的
嘲讽及悲怅。
 ——《牛津美国文学词典》

Comments
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


... the first step that American fiction has
taken since Henry James, because Fitzgerald
depicted the extolled grandest and most
boisterous, reckless and merry-making scene.
— T．S．Elliot
《了不起的盖茨比》是自亨利·詹姆斯以
来美国小说迈出的第一步，因为菲茨杰拉
德在其中描写了宏大、熙攘、轻率和寻欢，
凡此种种，曾风靡一时。
—— T．S．艾略特
Comments
F．Scott Fitzgerald (1896—1940) American
short-story writer and novelist famous for his
depictions of the Jazz Age (the 1920s), his most
brilliant novel being The Great Gatsby (1925). His
private life ... in both America and France, became
almost as celebrated as his novels.
 - Encyclopedia Britannica
 弗·司各特·菲茨杰拉德（1896—1940）美国小
说家，以其对爵士时代（20世纪20年代）的描
绘而著称。代表作为1925年问世的《了不起的
盖茨比》。他在美国和法国的私生活……几乎
与他的小说一样为人乐道。
 ——《大英百科全书》
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Comments
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
这人生，这虚无
最近看《了不起的盖茨比》，想起乔伊斯
的《阿拉比》，小男孩爱上了同学的姐姐，
做梦里这女孩都在闪金光，女孩老提有个
阿拉比的市场，听上去充满了东方神秘的
色彩，和女孩一样闪闪发光，小男孩于是
发花痴，一定要到那市场去给女孩买件东
西，于是一番折腾，汽车，火车，走错路，
等等，最后，到了阿拉比，突然发现，那
是一个庸俗简陋超级破败的地方。
梦碎。
Comments



长大后，小男孩成了盖茨比，爱上一个资
产阶级小姐，以为她可以为爱而爱，可以
放弃所有的门第的观念，可以是一生追求
的梦想，于是，盖茨比可以用不纯洁的手
段来赚钱，但是却把那个梦想保留得好好，
河湾对岸她家码头一直长明的那盏绿色的
灯光，就是闪闪发光的阿拉比市场。但是
他把她想错了，很严重的错误。有些东西
并没有改变，它只是不存在而已。
这一次搞得很严重了。
梦碎，人亡。
Assignments for “Barn Burning”

Read Faulkner’s short story “Barn
Burning” and think about
- relationship between people, such as
father and son, father and the landowner,
individuals (the Snopes family) and the
community
- the character of father and son
- the 3 questions on p.179