美国文学11 F.Scott Fitzgerald.ppt

3.3. Artistic view Like Henry James, Fitzgerald would keep an aesthetic distance from his characters, thinking that the author should be detached as much as possible so as to give more freedom to his characters. Like Joseph Conrad, he uses the limited point of view, leaving much of the narration to a character that shares more or less his ideas. In writing novels, he also adopts dualism, that is, to involve himself in the story and to detach himself from it at the same time so that he can stand aside analyze that participation, which not only makes his work more mature but also more powerful. IV. Special features 4.1. Theme of the American Dream Fitzgerald’s favorite theme is the American Dream. In The Great Gatsby and other works, a general pattern can be found to fully demonstrate Fitzgerald’s enthusiasm and his disillusionment with the American Dream: formally, a poor young man from the West trying to make his fortune in the East, but thematically, the young man goes on a journey of discovery from dream, through disenchantment, and finally to a sense of failure and despair. In this general pattern of the protagonist’s personal experience is incarnated the whole of American experience. 4.2. Narrative technique Fitzgerald inclines to tell the story through a person who functions both as a character in the story and the narrator of the whole work. Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby is a case in point. As a character, he is “within”, involving himself in the actions of the story, yet as a narrator, he is standing away from the story and able to give an objective presentation to the events and characters of the novel. 4.3. Symbolism His The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic novel, in which almost every thing has a symbolic meaning. For instance, the valley of ashes, the billboard eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, Daisy’s voice, Gatsby’s mansion in the West Egg, the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock, and so on, can all be interpreted in a symbolic way. They are