了不起的盖茨比英语毕业论文(12)

Part III The Cause of Disillusionment of American Dream

3.1 The Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties

The spirit of the Roaring Twenties was marked by a general feeling of discontinuity associated with modernity, a break with traditions. Everything seemed to be feasible through modern technology. New technologies, especially automobiles, moving pictures and radio proliferated modernity to a large part of the population. Formal decorative frills were shed in favor of practicality in both daily life and architecture. At the same time, jazz and dancing rose in popularity, in opposition to the mood of the specter of World War I. As such, the period is also often referred to as the Jazz Age. The Jazz Age, was, in the words of Malcolm Cowley, “not so much a historical period as a legend of glitter, of recklessness, and of talent in such profusion that it was sown broadcast like wild oats.” It was a legend of “American adolescence before pain set in.” Fitzgerald became “the angel of the twenties” and his writings those of a man inside that legendary period.

3.2 Social Environment and People factors

Another reason for the disillusionment of Gatsby’s American dream may be people factors. Gatsby’s love for Daisy was to the point of obsession, it was really touching, but he chose the wrong object to pay for their own love, Daisy was a secular, hedonistic money worshiper. She could never work hand in hand with Gatsby. And she would not pay a high price for the ideal, and make enormous sacrifices. Her life was of no true love, but cannot be without money. Gatsby’s tragedy is that he has not been able to understand Daisy’s motives, can not understand that she belonged to the complexity of the world. He only saw the world’s surface, bright and elegant, but did not see it hidden in the cold and heartless. In order to protect their rights and status, people in this world has taken hypocritical means.

In short, he loved the wrong person and did not wake up until he died. What always existed between him and Daisy was an unbridgeable gap between social status. He’s life was