The Great Gatsby 1.doc

The Great Gatsby was published in 1922 by F. Scott Fitzgerald. At first glance, the novel appears to be a simple love story, but further examination reveals Fitzgeralds masterful adj. 专横的，傲慢的；主人派头的；熟练的Scrutiny n. 详细审查；监视；细看；选票复查of American society during the 1920s and the corruption of the American dream. F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby (1926) is, at first sight, a novel about love, idealism and disillusionment. n. 幻灭；醒悟However, it soon reveals its hidden depths and enigmas. n. 解谜（enigma的复数）What is the significance of the strange waste land between West Egg and New York, where Myrtle Wilson meets her death, an alien landscape presided over by the eyes of T J Eckleburg whose eyes, like Gods, see everything? And what are we to make of the novels unobtrusive adj. 不唐突的；谦虚的；不引人注目的symbolism (the green light, the colour of American dollar bills, which burns at the end of Daisys dock, the references to the elements - land, sea and earth - over which Gatby claims mastery, n. 掌握；精通；优势；征服；统治权the contrast between East and West), or its subtle adj. 微妙的；精细的；敏感的；狡猾的；稀薄的use of the personalised first narrator, the unassuming Nick Carraway? It is a novel which has intrigued adj. 好奇的；被迷住了的v. 引起…的兴趣；使迷惑；策划阴谋（intrigue的过去分词and fascinated adj. 着迷的；被深深吸引的v. 使着迷；使陶醉（fascinate的过去分词）readers. Clearly, as a self-proclaimed tale of the West, it is exploring questions about America and what it means to be American. In this sense Gatsby is perhaps that legendary opus, 具有传奇色彩的作品the Great American Novel, following in the footsteps of works such as Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn. We will return to this aspect of the novel in more detail later on. However, we also need to be aware that it is a novel which has much to be say about more abstract questions to do with faith, belief and illusion. Although rooted in the Jazz Age which Fitzgerald is so often credited with naming, it is also a novel which should be considered alongside adv. 在旁边prep. 在……旁边works like The Waste Land, exploring that hollown