了不起的盖茨比_ppt (1)

THE GREAT GATSBY
BY Francis Scott Fitzgerald
contents
NO.1 About the Author NO.2 Background NO.3 Plots NO.4 Theme
NO.1 About the Author
1.The Author’s Life
Jazz Age.
The Roaring 1920s was a period of literary creativity, 2、 and works of several notable authors appeared during the period.
• Books that take the 1920s as their subject include: • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is often described as the epitome of the "Jazz Age" in American literature. • All Quiet onria Remarque recounts the horrors of WWI and also the deep detachment from German civilian life felt by many men returning from the front.
1934 <Tender is the Night>夜色温柔
unfinished work <The Last Tycoon> 最后 一个巨头
NO.3 Writing style
(1)semi-autobiographical (2)he showed great interests in the south America (3)He created a new kind of women character---------fashionable&independent &courageous.
ⅠBorn on Sep24th,1896 in a rich business family Ⅱdeveloped his interests in writing in middle school time Ⅲ fell in love with Zelda in 1918
Ⅳ married Zelda in 1920
they indulge themselves in wine and sensuality,this also led to the poverty in their later life
Ⅴ died of heart disease at the age of 46
2.Achievements
THEME The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920s
The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess.Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarchiparticular ng cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The American dream was originally about discovery, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness. In the 1920s depicted in the novel, however, easy money and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream, especially on the East Coast.
plots
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 works like The Waste Land, exploring that "hollowness at the heart of things" which lies just below the surface of modern life. Eliot himself remarked that the novel "interested and excited me more than any new novel I have seen, either English or American, for a number of years". Viewed from more distant perspectives it is possible to see Gatsby as an archetypally tragic figure, the epitome of idealism and innocence which strives for order, purpose and meaning in a chaotic and hostile world. In this sense Gatsby contains religious and metaphysical dimensions: the young man who shapes a "Platonic vision of himself" and who endows the worthless figure of Daisy with religious essence, eventually passes away into nothingness, with few at the funeral to lament the passing of his romantic dream.
• 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
Background
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age describes the period after the end of World War I, through the Roaring Twenties, ending with the onset of the Great Depression.
plots
• 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 Fitzgerald's masterful scrutiny of American society during the 1920s and the corruption of the American dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1926) is, at first sight, a novel about love, idealism and disillusionment. However, it soon reveals its hidden depths and enigmas. 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 God's, "see everything"? And what are we to make of the novel's unobtrusive symbolism (the green light, the colour of American dollar bills, which burns at the end of Daisy's dock, the references to the elements - land, sea and earth - over which Gatby claims mastery, the contrast between "East" and "West"), or its subtle use of the personalised first narrator, the unassuming Nick Carraway? It is a novel which has intrigued and fascinated 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, the "Great American Novel", following in the footsteps of works such as Moby Dick and Huckleberry Finn.