了不起的盖茨比 The Great Gatsby
TheGreatGatsby英语简介
TheGreatGatsby英语简介The Great Gatsby 《了不起的盖茨比》英语简介The character relation of the story is very complicated.Nick is the narrator of the story. He is Gatsby’s neighbor and good friend. And he is Daisy’s cousin,he is Daisy’s husband Tom’s college classmate too. Gatsby was still a very poor major many years ago and at that time he fell in love with a beautiful girl named Daisy, but when he came back with a huge fortune,Daisy had married a rich man,Tom.Gatsby wanted to retrieve the lost love,so Nick helped him to invite Daisy to have afternoon tea together.Gatsby had a firm belief that Daisy kept on loving him,and he believed the reason why Daisy didn’t wait him just because of money.One day,Daisy accidently knocked down and killed the mistress of Tom. Daisy pinned everything on Gatsby, and Gatsby determined to protect Daisy at any cost. The last, Gatsby was killed by Myrtle Wilson’s husband and only Nick attended his funeral.The story happened between 1919 to 1929,and this period was called Roaring Twenties or Jazz age. Economic boom made every Americans retrust The American Dream. At that time,people were confident and cheerful,hoping that they could realize their dreams and live a better life. The Roaring Twenties were years of revolution in social values among some Americans, esspecially people’s value in money.The Roaring Twenties ended with the coming of The Great Depression.It ended with a crash.The American Dream is an important theme of The Great Gatsby.The Great Gatsby is a realistic novel of a bell that tolls for theAmerican Dream,truthfully represents the spirit and features of the"Jazz Age".Through the glittering world of The Great Gatsby runs the themes of moral waste and decay and the lack of personal responsibility which is characteristic of the Jazz Age.The Great Gatsby is a general critique of the American dream.。
外国英语小说带翻译
外国英语小说带翻译The Great Gatsby 《了不起的盖茨比》。
The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which was first published in 1925. The story is set in the summer of 1922 and revolves around the lives of Jay Gatsby, a wealthy young man, and his love for Daisy Buchanan, a married woman.The novel is narrated by Nick Carraway, a young man from the Midwest who moves to New York to work in the bond business. He becomes neighbors with Gatsby, who throws extravagant parties in the hope that Daisy will attend. Nick becomes friends with Gatsby and learns about his past and his obsession with Daisy.The novel explores themes of love, wealth, and the American Dream. Gatsby's pursuit of wealth and status is fueled by his desire to win Daisy's love, but ultimately leads to his downfall. The characters in the novel are allflawed, with their own desires and motivations.Fitzgerald's writing is known for its lyrical prose andvivid descriptions of the Jazz Age.The Great Gatsby has been adapted into several films, including the 2013 Baz Luhrmann version starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby and Carey Mulligan as Daisy. The novel continues to be a popular choice for literature classes and book clubs, and is considered a classic of American literature.《了不起的盖茨比》是F. Scott Fitzgerald所写的小说，首次出版于1925年。
了不起的盖茨比英文作文
了不起的盖茨比英文作文英文：The Great Gatsby is a classic novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is a story of love, wealth, and tragedy set in the 1920s. The main character, Jay Gatsby, is a wealthy man who throws extravagant parties in the hopes of winning back his lost love, Daisy Buchanan. The novel is a commentary on the excess and superficiality of the Roaring Twenties.One of the reasons why The Great Gatsby is such a great novel is because of its vivid portrayal of the characters. Each character is unique and complex, with their own motivations and flaws. For example, Gatsby is a mysterious and enigmatic figure who is driven by his love for Daisy. He is willing to do whatever it takes to win her back, even if it means resorting to illegal activities. Daisy, on the other hand, is a shallow and selfish woman who is more concerned with her own happiness than the well-being ofothers.Another reason why The Great Gatsby is a great novel is because of its themes. The novel explores the themes of love, wealth, and the American Dream. Gatsby's pursuit of wealth and status is a reflection of the American Dream, which was a popular idea during the 1920s. However, the novel also shows the dark side of the American Dream, as Gatsby's obsession with wealth ultimately leads to his downfall.In conclusion, The Great Gatsby is a timeless novelthat continues to captivate readers today. Its vivid characters, complex themes, and commentary on the excess of the Roaring Twenties make it a must-read for anyone interested in literature.中文：《了不起的盖茨比》是F. Scott Fitzgerald所写的一部经典小说。
了不起的盖茨比梗概作文
了不起的盖茨比梗概作文The Great Gatsby is a classic American novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and first published in 1925. 这部小说以20世纪20年代的美国为背景，讲述了一个关于财富、名望和爱情的故事。
The story is set in the fictional town of West Egg on Long Island during the summer of 1922. 故事的主角是一个叫做杰·盖茨比的神秘而富有的年轻人，他为了追求心中的爱情，孤身一人在富人聚集的长岛上建立了一座豪华的庄园。
The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and World War I veteran who moves to West Egg to work in the bond business. 故事的叙述者尼克·卡拉威是盖茨比的邻居，同时也是故事中的关键人物之一。
As Nick settles into his new home, he becomes friends with his mysterious and wealthy neighbor Jay Gatsby, who holds extravagant parties at his mansion. 在与盖茨比的亲近中，尼克逐渐了解到盖茨比对Daisy的爱情和执着。
Jay Gatsby is deeply in love with Daisy Buchanan, a beautiful and wealthy young woman whom he met before he went off to war. 盖茨比对黛西的爱情一直是他追求财富和地位的动力，也是他心中最珍贵的东西。
the_great_gatsby(了不起的盖茨比)_英文介绍及赏析
The Great Gatsby F.Scott.FitzgeraldContextFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor Francis Scott Key, the author of The Star-Spangled Banner. Fitzgerald was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Though an intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Despite being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end. Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama. There he met and fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre. Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth, fun, and leisure led her to delay their wedding until he could prove a success. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him.Many of these events from Fitzgerald’s early life appear in his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Like Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is a thoughtful young man from Minnesota, educated at an Ivy League school (in Nick’s case, Yale), who moves to New York after the war. Also similar to Fitzgerald is Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes wealth and luxury and who falls in love with a beautiful young woman while stationed at a military camp in the South.Having become a celebrity, Fitzgerald fell into a wild, reckless life-style of parties and decadence, while desperately trying to please Zelda by writing to earn money. Similarly, Gatsby amasses a great deal of wealth at a relatively young age, and devotes himself to acquiring possessions and throwing parties that he believes will enable him to win Daisy’s love. As the giddiness of the Roaring Twenties dissolved into the bleakness of the Great Depression, however, Zelda suffered a nervous breakdown and Fitzgerald battled alcoholism, which hampered his writing. He published Tender Is the Night in 1934, and sold short stories to The Saturday Evening Post to support his lavish lifestyle. In 1937, he left for Hollywood to write screenplays, and in 1940, while working on his novel The Love of the Last Tycoon, died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four.Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed “the Jazz Age.” Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1919), made millionaires out of bootleggers, and an underground culture of revelry sprang up. Sprawling private parties managed to elude police notice, and “speakeasies”—secret clubs that sold liquor—thrived. The chaos and violence of World War I left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the war turned to wild and extravagant living to compensate. The staid conservatism and timeworn values of the previous decade were turned on their ear, as money, opulence, and exuberance became the order of the day.Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which unrestrained materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In many way s, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised.Plot OverviewNick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to have established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth. Nick’s next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night.Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at Yale and has social connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, an erstwhile classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also l earns a bit about Daisy and Tom’s marriage: Jordan tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom andMyrtle. At a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose.As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Ga tsby’s legendary parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone “old sport.” Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsby’s extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair.After a short time, Tom grows in creasingly suspicious of his wife’s relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans’ house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to drive into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand, and he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal—his fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him.When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that Gatsby’s car has struck and killed Myrtle, Tom’s lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle, but that Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtle’s husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George, who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots himself.Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust h e feels for the people surrounding Gatsby’s life and for the emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects that just as Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsby’s power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him “great,” Nick reflects that the era of dreaming—both Gatsby’s dream and the American dream—is over.Character ListNick Carraway - The novel’s narrator, Nick is a young man from Minnesota who, after being educated at Yale and fighting in World War I, goes to New York City to learn the bond business. Honest, tolerant, and inclined to reserve judgment, Nick often serves as a confidant for those with troubling secrets. After moving to West Egg, a fictional area of Long Island that is home to the newly rich, Nick quickly befriends his next-door neighbor, the mysterious Jay Gatsby. As Daisy Buchanan’s cousin, he facil itates the rekindling of the romance between her and Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is told entirely through Nick’s eyes; his thoughts and perceptions shape and color the story.Nick Carraway (In-Depth Analysis)Jay Gatsby - The title character and protagonist of the novel, Gatsby is a fabulously wealthy young man living in a Gothic mansion in West Egg. He is famous for the lavish parties he throws every Saturday night, but no one knows where he comes from, what he does, or how he made his fortune. As the novel progresses, Nick learns that Gatsby was born James Gatz on a farm in North Dakota; working for a millionaire made him dedicate his life to the achievement of wealth. When he met Daisy while training to be an officer in Louisville, he fell in love with her. Nick also learns that Gatsby made his fortune through criminal activity, as he was willing to do anything to gain the social position he thought necessary to win Daisy. Nick views Gatsby as a deeply flawed man, dishonest and vulgar, whose extraordinary optimism and power to transform his dreams into reality make him “great” nonetheless.Jay Gatsby (In-Depth Analysis)Daisy Buchanan - Nick’s cousin, and the woman Gatsby loves. As a young woman in Louisville before the war, Daisy was courted by a number of officers, including Gatsby. She fell in love with Gatsby and promised to wait for him. However, Daisy harbors a deep need to be loved, and when a wealthy, powerful young man named Tom Buchanan asked her to marry him, Daisy decided not to wait for Gatsby after all. Now a beautifulsocialite, Daisy lives with Tom across from Gatsby in the fashionable East Egg district of Long Island. She is sardonic and somewhat cynical, and behaves superficially to mask her pain at her husband’s constant infidelity. Daisy Buchanan (In-Depth Analysis)Tom Buchanan - Daisy’s immensely wealthy husband, once a member of Nick’s social club at Yale. Powerfully built and hailing from a socially solid old family, Tom is an arrogant, hypocritical bully. His social attitudes are laced with racism and sexism, and he never even considers trying to live up to the moral standard he demands from those around him. He has no moral qualms about his own extramarital affair with Myrtle, but when he begins to suspect Daisy and Gatsby of having an affair, he becomes outraged and forces a confrontation.Jordan Baker - Daisy’s friend, a woman with whom Nick becomes romantically involved during the course of the novel. A competitive golfer, Jordan represents one of the “new women” of the 1920s—cynical, boyish, and self-centered. Jordan is beautiful, but also dishonest: she cheated in order to win her first golf tournament and continually bends the truth.Myrtle Wilson - Tom’s lover, whose lifeless husband George owns a run-down garage in the valley of ashes. Myrtle herself possesses a fierce vitality and desperately looks for a way to improve her situation. Unfortunately for her, she chooses Tom, who treats her as a mere object of his desire.George Wilson - Myrtle’s husband, the lifeless, exhausted owner of a run-down auto shop at the edge of the valley of ashes. George loves and idealizes Myrtle, and is devastated by her affair with Tom. George is consumed with grief when Myrtle is killed. George is comparable to Gatsby in that both are dreamers and both are ruined by their unrequited love for women who love Tom.Owl Eyes - The eccentric, bespectacled drunk whom Nick meets at the first party he attends at Gatsby’s mansion. Nick finds Owl Eyes looking through Gatsby’s library, astonished that the boo ks are real. Klipspringer - The shallow freeloader who seems almost to live at Gatsby’s mansion, taking advantage of his host’s money. As soon as Gatsby dies, Klipspringer disappears—he does not attend the funeral, but he does call Nick about a pair of te nnis shoes that he left at Gatsby’s mansion.Analysis of Major CharactersJay GatsbyThe title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved this lofty goal by participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities. From his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty and longed for wealth and sophistication—he dropped out of St. Olaf’s College after only two weeks because he could not bear the janitorial job with which he was paying his tuition. Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in World War I in 1917. Gatsby immediately fell in love with Daisy’s aura of luxury, grace, and charm, and lied to her about his own background in order to convince her that he was good enough for her. Daisy promised to wait for him when he left for the war, but married Tom Buchanan in 1919, while Gatsby was studying at Oxford after the war in an attempt to gain an education. From that moment on, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, and his acquisition of millions of dollars, his purchase of a gaudy mansion on West Egg, and his lavish weekly parties are all merely means to that end.Fitzgerald delays the introduction of most of this information until fairly late in the novel. Gats by’s reputation precedes him—Gatsby himself does not appear in a speaking role until Chapter III. Fitzgerald initially presents Gatsby as the aloof, enigmatic host of the unbelievably opulent parties thrown every week at his mansion. He appears surrounded by spectacular luxury, courted by powerful men and beautiful women. He is the subject of a whirlwind of gossip throughout New York and is already a kind of legendary celebrity before he is ever introduced to the reader. Fitzgerald propels the novel forward through the early chapters by shrouding Gatsby’s background and the source of his wealth in mystery (the reader learns about Gatsby’s childhood in Chapter VI and receives definitive proof of his criminal dealings in Chapter VII). As a result, the reader’s first, distant impressions of Gatsby strike quite a different note from that of the lovesick, naive young man who emerges during the later part of the novel.Fitzgerald uses this technique of delayed character revelation to emphasize the theatrical qualit y of Gatsby’s approach to life, which is an important part of his personality. Gatsby has literally created his own character, even changing his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby to represent his reinvention of himself. As his relentless quest for Daisy demonstrates, Gatsby has an extraordinary ability to transform his hopes and dreams into reality; at the beginning of the novel, he appears to the reader just as he desires to appear to the world. This talent forself-invention is what gives Gatsby his qual ity of “greatness”: indeed, the title “The Great Gatsby” is reminiscent of billings for such vaudeville magicians as “The Great Houdini” and “The Great Blackstone,” suggesting that the persona of Jay Gatsby is a masterful illusion.Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.(See Important Quotations Explained)As the novel progresses and Fitzgerald deconstructs Gatsby’s self-presentation, Gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything on his dreams, not realizing that his dreams are unworthy of him. Gatsby invests Daisy with an idealistic perfection that she cannot possibly attain in reality and pursues her with a passionate zeal that blinds him to her limitations. His dream of her disintegrates, revealing the corruption that wealth causes and the unworthiness of the goal, much in the way Fitzgerald sees the American dream crumbling in the 1920s, as America’s powerful optimism, vitality, and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth.Gatsby is contrasted most consistently with Nick. Critics point out that the former, passionate and active, and the latter, sober and reflective, seem to represent two sides of Fitzgerald’s personality. Additionally, where as Tom is a cold-hearted, aristocratic bully, Gatsby is a loyal and good-hearted man. Though his lifestyle and attitude differ greatly from those of George Wilson, Gatsby and Wilson share the fact that they both lose their love interest to Tom.Nick CarrawayIf Gatsby represents one part of Fitzgerald’s personality, the flashy celebrity who pursued and glorified wealth in order to impress the woman he loved, then Nick represents another part: the quiet, reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East. A young man (he turns thirty during the course of the novel) from Minnesota, Nick travels to New York in 1922 to learn the bond business. He lives in the West Egg district of Long Island, next door to Gatsby. Nick is also Daisy’s cousin, which enables him to o bserve and assist the resurgent love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. As a result of his relationship to these two characters, Nick is the perfect choice to narrate the novel, which functions as a personal memoir of his experiences with Gatsby in the summer of 1922. Nick is also well suited to narrating The Great Gatsby because of his temperament. As he tells the reader in Chapter I, he is tolerant, open-minded, quiet, and a good listener, and, as a result, others tend to talk to him and tell him their secrets. Gatsby, in particular, comes to trust him and treat him as a confidant. Nick generally assumes a secondary role throughout the novel, preferring to describe and comment on events rather than dominate the action. Often, however, he functions as Fitzger ald’s voice, as in his extended meditation on time and the American dream at the end of Chapter IX.Insofar as Nick plays a role inside the narrative, he evidences a strongly mixed reaction to life on the East Coast, one that creates a powerful internal conflict that he does not resolve until the end of the book. On the one hand, Nick is attracted to the fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of New York. On the other hand, he finds that lifestyle grotesque and damaging. This inner conflict is symbolized througho ut the book by Nick’s romantic affair with Jordan Baker. He is attracted to her vivacity and her sophistication just as he is repelled by her dishonesty and her lack of consideration for other people.Nick states that there is a “quality of distortion” to life in New York, and this lifestyle makes him lose his equilibrium, especially early in the novel, as when he gets drunk at Gatsby’s party in Chapter II. After witnessing the unraveling of Gatsby’s dream and presiding over the appalling spectacle of Gatsby’s funeral, Nick realizes that the fast life of revelry on the East Coast is a cover for the terrifying moral emptiness that the valley of ashes symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this insight demonstrates, he returns to Minnesota in search of a quieter life structured by more traditional moral values.Daisy BuchananPartially based on Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, Daisy is a beautiful young woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nick’s cousin and the object of Gatsby’s love. As a young debutante in Louisville, Daisy was extremely popular among the military officers stationed near her home, including Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lied about his background to Daisy, claiming to be from a wealthy family in order to convince her that he was worthy of her. Eventually, Gatsby won Daisy’s heart, and they made love before Gatsby left to fight in the war. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she chose instead to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy lifestyle and who had the support of her parents.After 1919, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, making her the single goal of all of his dreams and the main motivation behind his acquisition of immense wealth through criminal activity. To Gatsby, Daisy represents the paragon of perfection—she has the aura of charm, wealth, sophistication, grace, and aristocracy that he longed for as a child in North Dakota and that first attracted him to her. In reality, however, Daisy fallsfar short of Gatsby’s ideals. She is beautiful and charming, but also fickle, shallow, bored, and sardonic. Nick characterizes her as a careless person who smashes things up and then retreats behind her money. Daisy proves her real nature when she chooses Tom over Gatsby in Chapter VII, then allows Gatsby to take the blame for killing Myrtle Wilson even though she herself was driving the car. Finally, rather than attend Gatsby’s funeral, Daisy and Tom move away, leaving no forwarding address.Like Zelda Fitzgerald, Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is capable of affection (she seems genuinely fond of Nick and occasionally seems to love Gatsby sincerely), but not of sustained loyalty or care. She is indifferent even to her own infant daughter, never discussing her and treating her as an afterthought when she is introduced in Chapter VII. In Fitzgerald’s conception of America in the 1920s, Daisy represents the amoral values of the aristocratic East Egg set.Themes, Motifs & SymbolsThemesThemes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920sOn the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular 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 overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. A person from any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracy—families with old wealth—scorned the newly rich industrialists and speculators. Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social trends. Nick and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the newfound cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from the war. The various social climbers and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsby’s parties evidence the greedy scramble for wealth. The clash between “old money” and “new money” manifests itself in the novel’s symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s fortune s ymbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging.As Fitzgerald saw it (and as Nick explains in Chapter IX), 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. The main plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as Gatsby’s dream of loving Daisy is ruined by the difference in their respective social statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough money to impress her, and the rampant materialism that characterizes her lifestyle. Additionally, places and objects in The Great Gatsby have meaning only because characters instill them with meaning: the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg best exemplify this idea. In Nick’s mind, the ability to create meaningful symbols constitutes a central component of the American dream, as early Americans invested their new nation with their own ideals and values.Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. Just as Americans have given America meaning through their dreams for their own lives, Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor p ossesses. Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its object—money and pleasure. Like 1920s Americans in general, fruitlessly seeking a bygone era in which their dreams had value, Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished past—his time in Louisville with Daisy—but is incapable of doing so. When his dream crumbles, all that is left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is moveback to Minnesota, where American values have not decayed.The Hollowness of the Upper ClassOne of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth, specifically, how the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from and relate to the old aristocracy of the country’s richest families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes’ invitation to lunch. In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, epitomized by the Buchanans’ tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker.What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in heart, as the East Eggers prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies who are so used to money’s ability to ease their minds that they never worry about hurting others. The Buchanans exemplify this stereotype when, at the end of the novel, they simply move to a new ho use far away rather than condescend to attend Gatsby’s funeral. Gatsby, on the other hand, whose recent wealth derives from criminal activity, has a sincere and loyal heart, remaining outside Daisy’s window until four in the morning in Chapter VII simply to make sure that Tom does not hurt her. Ironically, Gatsby’s good qualities (loyalty and love) lead to his death, as he takes the blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting Daisy be punished, and the Buchanans’ bad qualities (fickleness and selfishness) allow them to remove themselves from the tragedy not only physically but psychologically.MotifsMotifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.GeographyThroughout the novel, places and settings epitomize the various aspects of the 1920s American society that Fitzgerald depicts. East Egg represents the old aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich, the valley of ashes the moral and social decay of America, and New York City the uninhibited, amoral quest for money and pleasure. Additionally, the East is connected to the moral decay and social cynicism of New York, while the West (including Midwestern and northern areas such as Minnesota) is connected to more traditional social values and ideals. Nick’s analysis in Chapter IX of the story he has related reveals his sensitivity to this dichotomy: though it is set in the East, the story is really one of the West, as it tells how people originally from west of the Appalachians (as all of the main characters are) react to the pace and style of life on the East Coast.WeatherAs in much of Shakespeare’s work, the weather in The Great Gatsby unfailingly matches the emotional and narrative tone of the story. Gatsby and Daisy’s reunion begins amid a pouring rain, proving awkward and melancholy; their love reawakens just as the sun begins to come out. Gatsby’s climactic confrontation with Tom occurs on the hottest day of the summer, under the scorching sun (like the fatal encounter between Mercutio and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet). Wilson kills Gatsby on the first day of autumn, as Gatsby floats in his pool despite a palpable chill in the air—a symbolic attempt to stop time and restore his relationship with Daisy to the way it was five years before, in 1917.SymbolsSymbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.The Green LightSituated at the end of Daisy’s East Egg dock and barely visible from Gatsby’s West Egg lawn, the green light represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and in Chapter I he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. In Chapter IX, Nick compares the green light to how America, rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the new nation.The Valley of AshesFirst introduced in Chapter II, the valley of ashes between West Egg and New York City consists of a long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes. It represents the moral and social decay that results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves with regard for nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of ashes also symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.The Eyes of Doctor T. J. EckleburgThe eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising。
the great gatsby内容简介
the great gatsby内容简介
《了不起的盖茨比》（The Great Gatsby）是美国作家弗朗西斯·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德于1925年发表的一部小说。
小说讲述了20世纪20年代的美国华丽的浮华生活和东部精英阶层的道德腐败，主要围绕着主人公杰伊·盖茨比和他的痴情追求达芙妮·布坎南展开。
盖茨比是一个自我造就的富翁，为了痴情于达芙妮而建造起奢华的庄园和昂贵的生活方式。
但实际上他是一个心灵孤独的人，因为达芙妮早已嫁给了富商汤姆·布坎南。
在奢华的聚会中，盖茨比认识了汤姆的情人黛西，并与她展开了一段暗恋。
但最终，在汤姆的暴力威胁下，盖茨比的爱情梦想破灭。
《了不起的盖茨比》以优美的语言、细腻的叙事，揭示了人性的卑微与社会的冷酷，以及人们对爱情与名望的狂热追求。
该小说被誉为20世纪美国文学的经典作品，广受读者欢迎和赞誉。
(完整版)thegreatgatsby(了不起的盖茨比)英文介绍及赏析
The Great Gatsby F。
Scott。
FitzgeraldContextFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor Francis Scott Key，the author of The Star-Spangled Banner。
Fitzgerald was raised in St。
Paul， Minnesota. Though an intelligent child， he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Despite being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated， instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end.Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant， and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery， Alabama. There he met and fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre. Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth， fun， and leisure led her to delay their wedding until he could prove a success。
了不起的盖茨比第三章中英翻译The-Great-Gatsby-Chapter-3
Chapter 3THERE was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor−boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week−ends his Rolls−Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing−brushes and hammers and garden−shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruitier in New York every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulp less halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb.At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors−d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.总是有悠扬的音乐在夏夜的晚上从我隔壁传出。
THE GREAT GATSBY 了不起的盖茨比
1
内容简介
写作背景 人物分析 写作手法
盖茨比的了不起
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3
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写作背景
《了不起的盖茨比》是美国作家弗· 司各特· 菲茨杰拉 德1925年所写的一部以20世纪20年代的纽约市及长岛 为背景的中篇小说，小说的背景被设定在现代化的美 国社会中上阶层的白人圈内，通过尼克的叙述展开。
《了不起的盖茨比》是美国作家弗· 司各特· 菲 茨杰拉德的 “精神自传”
美国最富有的大家族之一的继承人，有纨绔子弟 的流俗气，还有着人性中阴险与狡诈的黑暗一面。
写作手法
• 人物的象征意义
• 背景设置中象征手法的运用
• 物品设置中象征手法的运用
人物的象征意义——盖茨比Gatsby
• 菲茨杰拉德设法通过主人公盖茨比来展现美国生活的特点。 为了能把个人哲学中的浪漫理想转化为!美国梦,他设计的 主人公必须具有美国特点。 • 盖茨比就是作者特意创作出来担任这一重任的角色。他是 个不知名的小人物,并且通过个人努力取得了成功。盖茨 比天真、幼稚,相信金钱可以买到一切体现了美国人的性 格,而盖茨比相信在上层社会存在纯真诚实的爱情却与现 实格格不入,现实中上层社会的爱情仅仅是对才能、情感、 欲望和智慧的浪费,正如美国梦一样,瑰丽多彩、引人入胜, 但仅仅是一种幻想。 • 盖茨比的特点、性格及梦想完全体现了美国人的特点、性 格及梦想,盖茨比是整个美国人特点的缩影。没人知道盖 茨比的真实身份及过去的日子,正如战后美国社会弥漫的 漂泊不定之感和神空虚,人们通过追逐金钱来表达感情和 找回自我,实现自己的美国梦。
Jay Gatsby Daisy
• 其次，在盖茨比的身上，可以看 到拜金时代在他身上打下的深刻 烙印。
• 盖茨比出身贫寒，父母都是贫农，但缺 钱已经缺怕了的他有着强烈的支配金钱 的欲望。盖茨比在海上经历的冒险，在 战场上勇猛的冲杀，虽然奖章代表着荣 誉，却不能给他带来金钱。 • 他固执地认为黛西离开他是因为他的贫 穷，他并不怪罪黛西，而是将所有的怒 火归罪于自己的贫穷，他不择手段地获 取财富。当汤姆・布坎南揭穿他的老底 时，激动和愤怒使他的表情出现扭曲， 可见他被人真正戳痛了伤处。 • 盖茨比是那个时代的一个典型的矛盾人 物，优雅中透出憨拙，精明中显出“乡 巴佬”的愚蠢。他既狠心，又善良；既 时时为财富的占有而自豪，又时时为自 己的穷苦出身而自卑。
the_great_gatsby(了不起的盖茨比)_英文介绍及赏析
The Great Gatsby F.Scott.Fitzgerald.Character ListDaisy Buchanan - Nick’s cousin, and the woman Gatsby loves. As a young woman in Louisville before the war, Daisy was courted by a number of officers, including Gatsby. She fell in love with Gatsby and promised to wait for him. However, Daisy harbors a deep need to be loved, and when a wealthy, powerful young man named Tom Buchanan asked her to marry him, Daisy decided not to wait for Gatsby after all. Now a beautiful socialite, Daisy lives with Tom across from Gatsby in the fashionable East Egg district of Long Island. She is sardonic and somewhat cynical, and behaves superficially to mask her pain at her husband’s constant infidelity.Daisy Buchanan (In-Depth Analysis)Tom Buchanan - Daisy’s immensely wealthy husband, once a member of Nick’s social club at Yale. Powerfully built and hailing from a socially solid old family, Tom is an arrogant, hypocritical bully. His social attitudes are laced with racism and sexism, and he never even considers trying to live up to the moral standard he demands from those around him. He has no moral qualms about his own extramarital affair with Myrtle, but when he begins to suspect Daisy and Gatsby of having an affair, he becomes outraged and forces a confrontation.Jordan Baker - Daisy’s friend, a woman with whom Nick becomes romantically involved during the course of the novel. A competitive golfer, Jordan represents one of the “new women” of the 1920s—cynical, boyish, and self-centered. Jordan is beautiful, but also dishonest: she cheated in order to win her first golf tournament and continually bends the truth.Myrtle Wilson - Tom’s lover, whose lifeless husband George owns a run-down garage in the valley of ashes. Myrtle herself possesses a fierce vitality and desperately looks for a way to improve her situation. Unfortunately for her, she chooses Tom, who treats her as a mere object of his desire.Analysis of Major CharactersDaisy BuchananPartially based on Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, Daisy is a beautiful young woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nick’s cousin and the object of Gatsby’s love. As a young debutante in Louisville, Daisy was extremely popular among the military officers stationed near her home, including Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lied about his background to Daisy, claiming to be from a wealthy family in order to convince her that he was worthy of her. Eventually, Gatsby won Daisy’s heart, and they made love before Gatsby left to fight in the war. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she chose instead to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy lifestyle and who had the support of her parents.After 1919, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, making her the single goal of all of his dreams and the main motivation behind his acquisition of immense wealth through criminal activity. To Gatsby, Daisy represents the paragon of perfection—she has the aura of charm, wealth, sophistication, grace, and aristocracy that he longed for as a child in North Dakota and that first attracted him to her. In reality, however, Daisy falls far short of Gatsby’s ideals. She is beautiful and charming, but also fickle, shallow, bored, and sardonic. Nick characterizes her as a careless person who smashes things up and then retreats behind her money. Daisy proves her real nature when she chooses Tom over Gatsby in Chapter VII, then allows Gatsby to take the blame for killing Myrtle Wilson even though she herself was driving the car. Finally, rather than atte nd Gatsby’s funeral, Daisy and Tom move away, leaving noforwarding address.Like Zelda Fitzgerald, Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is capable of affection (she seems genuinely fond of Nick and occasionally seems to love Gatsby sincerely), but not of sustained loyalty or care. She is indifferent even to her own infant daughter, never discussing her and treating her as an afterthought when she is introduced in Chapter VII. In Fitzgerald’s conception of America in the 1920s, Daisy represents the amoral values of the aristocratic East Egg set.。
作文：《了不起的盖茨比的美国梦》
作文：《了不起的盖茨比的美国梦》英文版本The Great Gatsby's American DreamOne unforgettable character in American literature is the protagonist Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby. He is a child from a poor family, relying on his talent and diligence, gradually becoming a man with endless wealth and social status. His story carries the hope and absurdity of the American Dream, becoming one of the most shocking images in the hearts of many people.Gatsby's American Dream is not just about pursuing wealth and status, but more importantly, pursuing his true love. His persistence and pursuit of Daisy became his greatest goal and motivation in life. Although he was not with Daisy in the end, it did not hinder his longing and pursuit for a better life. He created his own American Dream with his own efforts and determination.Gatsby's tragedy also stems from his persistence and pursuit of the American Dream. He pursued his ideals at all costs, only to find that everything was just a fantasy and illusion. His life was filled with loneliness and helplessness, and the moment he ultimately died may represent his ultimate failure and despair of the American Dream.However, although Gatsby's story is a tragedy, his courage and unwavering spirit are worth pondering. He dares to pursue his dreams and challenges the arrangements of fate, and this spirit should be learned and respected by each of us. Gatsby's American Dream may not be perfect, but it is precisely this persistent pursuit of ideals and happiness that has made him an unforgettable figure.So, let's learn Gatsby's spirit together, courageously pursue our dreams, not afraid of difficulties, persevere until our dreams come true. Because the American Dream always belongs to those who dare to pursue it, and Gatsby is always a remarkable legend.中文版本《了不起的盖茨比的美国梦》美国文学中一位让人难以忘怀的人物就是《了不起的盖茨比》中的主人公杰伊·盖茨比。
great gatsby英文梗概
great gatsby英文梗概
摘要：
1.了解《了不起的盖茨比》的英文梗概
2.梗概的主要内容
3.梗概的重要性
正文：
《了不起的盖茨比》（The Great Gatsby）是美国作家F·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德（F.Scott Fitzgerald）创作的一部小说，被认为是美国文学史上最杰出的作品之一。
这部小说通过讲述20 世纪20 年代长岛富人阶层的生活，揭示了当时的美国梦以及社会道德的沦丧。
梗概的主要内容
《了不起的盖茨比》的英文梗概讲述了在20 世纪20 年代长岛的富人阶层中，一位名叫杰伊·盖茨比（Jay Gatsby）的富有男人举办的一系列豪华派对。
这些派对的目的是吸引他的爱人黛西·布坎南（Daisy Buchanan），但最终他们的爱情故事以悲剧收场。
小说通过这个故事，展示了当时的美国梦以及社会道德的沦丧。
梗概的重要性
梗概对于读者来说具有重要的参考价值。
首先，通过梗概，读者可以迅速了解小说的主要内容和故事情节，从而决定是否值得花时间阅读。
其次，梗概可以帮助读者在阅读过程中更好地理解小说中的各种象征和隐喻，提高阅读效果。
最后，梗概还可以为读者提供一个整体框架，帮助他们更好地把握小说的
主题和作者的创作意图。
总之，《了不起的盖茨比》的英文梗概对于读者来说具有重要的参考价值。
了解梗概可以帮助读者更好地理解小说的内容、主题和作者的创作意图。
英文演讲稿 了不起的盖茨比
The Great Gatsby Night falls, I stood in this same place, I thought of Gatsby, Daisy Terminal showed me the green light, he has been waiting for so long, once the dream is so palpable, he hugged her. Gatsby believed that green light, believed long lost hope. Hope finish further away from us, but that is not important. Tomorrow we will run faster, and put our arms farther. One day, we can continue to do sailing, riding, was constantly pushed back till, past.----Fitzgerald The introduction of the WritterThe Great Gatsby, is the United States 20th century an important novelist made by Fitzgerald, he was a "lost generation" writers, is the "jazz age" poet laureate. Fitzgerald of novel vivid of reflect has in the 1920 of the 20th century "United States dream" of burst, show has big depression period United States upper social of spirit, its life experience and he of works are can description, he is United States "Jazz times" of spokesman, is in the 1920 of the 20th century has representative of writer, he has success and brilliant of side, also has bitter and frustrated of side, had was called "failed of authority". His life is intertwined with ambition and reality, success and failure, triumph and a dog, indulgence and decadence, love and pain, United States and civilized Europe clash of civilizations, conflict between East and West, dreams anddisillusionment ... ... It's all in the performance of most of his novels, the most representative of the Great Gatsby, it lays the author in the modern United States status of literature.The introduction to the storyStory takes place in the modern United States social class on the white circle, and described by Cab Calloway. Cab Calloway was born in the United States Midwest and later to the United States in New York learning to run a stock business, and want to get rich. He lives on Long Island, and the story of Gatsby-o, and make friends with them. Gatsby was originally called the gates, and Cab Calloway as from the Midwest, he was born normal but ambitious, due to bootlegging and riches. He used to hold a Grand party at home, dayanbinke, to display its rich, objective is to attract the lovers Daisy five years ago and win back his heart. Five years ago, Gatsby's Daisy when military service was his lover, Gatsby overseas during the first world war, because of greed was born wealthy family married dudes Tom. However, desire and carnal meet Daisy has not filled the spiritual void and emptiness. In Cab Calloway's help, the share closed with gates after rekindling. But Daisy is not the original one was Daisy, she no longer is Gatsby's idea of the innocent girl, but a stupid, selfish, vulgar and beautiful body. Gatsby's beautiful dream has finally been shattered, but he did last fight, there is a hint of fantasy to Daisy, which suffered a more tragic and sad ending. Later, Daisy, in adrink driving Gatsby's car killed Tom's mistress, but plotted together with Tom and Gatsby are cruel referred to, lead to deceased husband burst into Gatsby's home, shot Gatsby and then committed suicide, Gatsby ultimately become selfish and cruel victim of Daisy.Delicate and accurate display of the Great Gatsby in the 1920 of the 20th century United States social style, makes a detailed depiction of the sort that glamorous, feasting frenzy scenes. World War I, United States is undoubtedly the biggest winner, surging economic strength, the spirit world was facing a huge crisis. On the ruins of the old morality, ideals, beliefs, the post-war United States youth slipped into the pursuit of consumption life to enjoy. Money is considered above all gods in the world. Challenges to traditional moral values, and the new value has not been formed. Thus, the Americans in the age of moral turpitude, spiritual emptiness. People dreaming of riches, the pursuit of material to meet and enjoy a social fashionThe reasons I love the Great GatsbyThere are many reason to love the Great Gatsby: like opening that his father's advice: when you comment on other people's, keep in mind that not all people are like you superior conditions. Like Gatsby, standing on the beach looking at Daisy's Dock Green, looked at him like "stretched out his arms in a strange way", like the kind of surprise and keen; unknown like Gatsby's mansion on the night of lights, and wind from thegarden to the music and laughter, sensual pleasures, horny. Gatsby hiding in this bustling behind the lonely and repressed desire. Love after the death of that human well-being, like looking at the car from another end of the world came to the door of the mansion, but have not found a better dinner had ended. Also like the book's language, metaphor andstory-telling way, and delicate but rigorous structure. Only after repeated reading, you will find everyone in the book not only full, independent and invisible and taper up in an episode of the snare, becomes part of the plot.This conclusion, however, in front of the Great Gatsby back into an indefinable weak and dull. In the face of love, Gatsby is always waiting, he found Daisy at the end terminals of the shadows behind her the green light to start, he was caught in a strong pain and guarding, although this watch for seemingly smart people, in many cases, is simply stupid. When we encounter an eyeful only money but tenderness in front of you to say I love you girls how to respond? scarier is that she does not intend to, sincere look in her eyes and you can't shy away from you that nothing in your wallet when maybe we, in response to the speculation can only be embarrassed and silent. But Gatsby realized that she loved him, but he had no money. Thus, Gatsby's tragedy began. Fitzgerald is great that we have so many words to express but also had to shut his mouth, looked at Gatsby irreparable gradually fell to the later built his own love in the backyard garden.。
the great gatsby译文
the great gatsby译文
《了不起的盖茨比》
作者：F·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德
译者：略
第一章
在我的一生中，假如一些东西浮上了水面，我就总是希望遭殃。
并且假如我真遭了殃，我也会细细地品味一番。
——杰伊·盖
茨比
当我29岁的时候，我的乡村富户朋友汤姆•布坦南带我去纽约
一起玩。
他是一个很高大的金发男子，一个在那个年代里扮演了“新金融”角色的人物。
在那个让人吃惊的女人们尚未习惯现金富商们告诉他们的故事之前，这类角色通常是默默无闻的。
我以邱小颖方式感慨，但这对他来说是个挑战。
他的态度装载着昂首挺胸的世界，对他来说除了自己之外都是渺小的。
汤姆的恰荣耀之外，长得很像邦慕斯，但我总是幻想邦慕斯可能是势利的。
渐渐地，我清楚地看到这被唤做“暗湖”的闷墙后面的门户，是他个人不愿花时间去打破的一堵墙。
他手里的笔更像一个握着长枪的斯巴达勇士的样子。
2002年，我要去纽约看汤姆。
所以我在公布我的日程之前，
首先让他解释为什么他没从瓜岛飞回来；终于，在我们抵达那
里的时候，它为此事出了眼睛。
他的苍白的女人——女巫这种讨厌的形象一直是我的嘲笑；她经常给汤姆写信，甚至给我们几百元的支票，如果在纽约偶然度过不想在金罩里结账的周末后，我们就会敲门向酒窖开放；她的透明的爱豆，那是金枪鱼罐头里泡出来的，是用水割的；她16岁时重逾200磅，让所有男子在深情厚意下逛过；她是泡在美国精神里的浓形式。
“眼前的《国家地理》摆在我面前，很快两小时过去了。
这一刻，桌子上的物质更加让我怀念了。
”。
《了不起的盖茨比》导读The Great Gatsby
《了不起的盖茨比》导读（上海外语教育出版社2018年5月版）第一章出现人物及其介绍：I:名叫Nick。
住在the end of West Egg。
Tom与Daisy夫妇：Tom毕业于耶鲁大学，与在纽约的一女士有染。
Daisy是Nick的second cousin。
Jordan Baker(Miss Baker):来自于Louisville，与Tom、Daisy夫妇常在一起交往，与Daisy一起长大。
第二章Tom Buchanan与Nick一起去纽约，途经汽车修理厂（兼营汽车销售、修理及加油）。
汽车修理厂主人George Wilson，妻Myrtle。
Myrtle与Catherine是sister关系。
此章节亦提及the Mckees夫妇。
先生为摄影师。
Catherine谈话中提及Gatsby是Kaise Wilhelm的nephew。
Tom打了Myrtile(即Mrs.Wilson)。
第三章别人谈及Gatsby：每个周末开party，很有钱。
此章种种对其有钱的描述。
女士谈话，议论Gatsby:曾经杀过一个人；在一战中是间谍；花重金给客人买无意中坏掉的裙子等等。
Gatsby邀请我去他家，我与他同桌说话，才意识到对谈者即盖茨比。
此章节描述在盖茨比对谈过程中，管家来让他接电话，“Chicago wants you on the phone”,“Philadelphia wants you on the phone”我对Gatsby的感觉:insincere。
第四章Gatsby开豪车带我，自述生平：中西部有钱人家庭之子；在英国牛津大学受教育，有与地位显赫伯爵合照；家人去世，因此继承许多金钱；参加过一战，军衔Major。
途中警察拦车，Gatsby 出示一卡片，警察即放行。
Gatsby自述曾经帮过警察局长。
在饭店，1.Gatsby的朋友Wolfsheim Meyer谈论朋友Rosy Rosenthal被杀的故事。
了不起的盖兹比英文名句
了不起的盖兹比英文名句《了不起的盖茨比》（The Great Gatsby）是美国作家弗朗西斯·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德（F. Scott Fitzgerald）创作的一部小说，被认为是美国文学中的经典之一。
这部小说中包含了许多著名的英文名句，下面列举一些其中的例子：1. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."（"我们顶着潮水，向着逆流前行，永无止境地被拽回过去。
"）2. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us."（"盖茨比相信那绿光，那年年在我们前面渐渐远去的狂欢未来。
"）3. "I hope she'll be a fool — that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."（"我希望她会是个傻瓜—— 在这个世界上，女孩最好能成为一个美丽的小傻瓜。
"）4. "They're a rotten crowd...You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."（"他们是一群腐烂的人...你抵得上这帮混蛋加在一起。
"）5. "I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."（"我既在内部又在外部，同时被生活无穷无尽的多样性所陶醉，又被它所排斥。
最喜欢的书了不起的盖茨比英文介绍
最喜欢的书了不起的盖茨比英文介绍"The Great Gatsby" is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and published in 1925. Set in the prosperous years following World War I, the story takes place in Long Island, New York, and explores themes of wealth, love, and the American Dream. The novel is narrated by Nick Carraway, a young man from the Midwest who moves to New York City to pursue a career in finance. He becomes acquainted with his enigmatic and wealthy neighbor, Jay Gatsby, known for his extravagant parties and mysterious background. As Nick delves into Gatsby"s life, he becomes entangled in a web of love, deceit, and tragedy.Jay Gatsby, the central character of the novel, is depicted as a self-made millionaire who is driven by his love for Daisy Buchanan, a woman from his past who is now married to Tom Buchanan, an arrogant and wealthy socialite. Gatsby"s pursuit of the American Dream and his relentless desire to recreate the past form the core of the story.Fitzgerald"s writing style beautifully captures the glamour and decadence of the Jazz Age, while also exposing the emptiness and moral decay that lurk beneath the surface. Through vivid descriptions and intricate characterizations, he explores the themes of social class, illusion versus reality,and the corrupting influence of wealth."The Great Gatsby" has been widely regarded as a masterpiece of American literature and a classic representation of the Roaring Twenties. It continues to captivate readers with its compelling narrative, rich symbolism, and poignant commentary on the human condition. This timeless novel offers a thought-provoking exploration of ambition, love, and the consequences of chasing an elusive dream. It remains a favorite among readers worldwide and serves as a poignant reminder of the complexities of the human experience.。
英文作文 了不起的盖茨比
英文作文了不起的盖茨比英文，The Great Gatsby is undeniably a classic piece of literature that has left an indelible mark on readers for generations. F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel paints a vivid picture of the Jazz Age, exploring themes of love, wealth, and the elusive American Dream.One of the most fascinating aspects of The Great Gatsby is its complex characters, particularly Jay Gatsby himself. Gatsby embodies the quintessential self-made man, rising from humble origins to become a wealthy and enigmatic figure. His extravagant parties and mysterious demeanor captivate both the other characters in the novel and readers alike.One of the most memorable scenes that highlights Gatsby's allure is the first time Nick Carraway attends one of his lavish parties. The opulence and extravagance on display are mesmerizing, and yet there is an air of loneliness and longing that permeates the festivities.Gatsby's persona is carefully crafted, a facade that hides his deep yearning for Daisy Buchanan, his lost love.The symbolism in The Great Gatsby is also incredibly rich and layered. The green light at the end of Daisy's dock, the Valley of Ashes, and the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg all serve as powerful symbols that add depth to the narrative. These symbols speak to the themes of the novel, reflecting the hollowness of materialism and the emptiness of the pursuit of wealth without love or purpose.Ultimately, The Great Gatsby serves as a cautionarytale about the dangers of obsession and the fleeting nature of the American Dream. Gatsby's tragic end underscores the fragility of human ambition and the consequences of living a life based on illusion rather than reality. It's a timeless story that continues to resonate with readers today, reminding us of the importance of authenticity and the true value of human connection.中文，《了不起的盖茨比》无疑是一部经典的文学作品，几代读者都为之倾倒。
解读《了不起的盖茨比》
解读《了不起的盖茨比》《了不起的盖茨比》(The Great Gatsby)是美国作家F·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德(F. Scott Fitzgerald)于1925年创作的一部描绘20世纪初美国社会风貌的小说。
这部作品以独特的视角展现了一个充满奢华、腐化和悲剧的世界，通过对主人公盖茨比的刻画，揭示了美国梦的虚幻和人性的复杂。
故事发生在20世纪20年代的美国，这是一个爵士乐繁荣、放荡不羁的时代。
在纽约市的长岛上，有一个名叫盖茨比的人，他通过非法途径积累了巨额财富，成为了社交名流。
然而，他的内心却充满了孤独和无奈，因为他一直深爱着远在故乡的初恋黛西·布坎南。
为了重燃旧情，盖茨比举办了一系列豪华派对，试图吸引黛西的注意。
然而，当他得知黛西已经嫁给了富有的汤姆·布坎南时，绝望使他走上了犯罪的道路。
最终，盖茨比的悲剧命运与整个社会的虚伪和堕落紧密相连。
《了不起的盖茨比》的主题涉及爱情、欲望、金钱和社会阶层等多个方面。
首先，小说通过盖茨比和黛西的爱情纠葛，表现了人们对于纯粹爱情的渴望和追求。
然而，当现实的压力和物质的诱惑出现时，这种爱情往往会变得脆弱不堪。
其次，小说通过对盖茨比的塑造，展示了人性中的贪婪和自私。
盖茨比虽然致富，但他的内心却始终无法摆脱贫穷的记忆和对黛西的痴迷。
最后，小说通过展示20世纪初美国社会的腐化现象，对“美国梦”进行了深刻的批判。
在这个时代，金钱成为了衡量一个人价值的重要标准，而道德和良知却被忽视和践踏。
在中国文学史上，《了不起的盖茨比》也产生了广泛的影响。
许多中国作家和学者将其视为一部揭示现代社会矛盾和人性困境的作品。
同时，这部小说也为中国人民提供了一个了解西方文化和社会变迁的机会。
总之，《了不起的盖茨比》是一部具有深刻思想内涵和艺术价值的经典之作，值得我们反复品味和思考。
the great gatsby(了不起的盖茨比) 英文 介绍及赏析
The Great Gatsby F.Scott.FitzgeraldContextFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor Francis Scott Key, the author of The Star-Spangled Banner. Fitzgerald was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Though an intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Despite being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plagued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end.Fitzgerald became a second lieutenant, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery, Alabama. There he met and fell in love with a wild seventeen-year-old beauty named Zelda Sayre. Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth, fun, and leisure led her to delay their wedding until he could prove a success. With the publication of This Side of Paradise in 1920, Fitzgerald became a literary sensation, earning enough money and fame to convince Zelda to marry him.Many of these events from Fitzgerald’s early life appear in his most famous novel, The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Like Fitzgerald, Nick Carraway is a thoughtful young man from Minnesota, educated at an Ivy League school (in Nick’s case, Yale), who moves to New York after the war. Also similar to Fitzgerald is Jay Gatsby, a sensitive young man who idolizes wealth and luxury and who falls in love with a beautiful young woman while stationed at a military camp in the South.Having become a celebrity, Fitzgerald fell into a wild, reckless life-style of parties and decadence, while desperately trying to please Zelda by writing to earn money. Similarly, Gatsby amasses a great deal of wealth at a relatively young age, and devotes himself to acquiring possessions and throwing parties that he believes will enable him to win Daisy’s love. As the giddiness of the Roaring Twenties dissolved into the bleakness of the Great Depression, however, Zelda suffered a nervous breakdown and Fitzgerald battled alcoholism, which hampered his writing. He published Tender Is the Night in 1934, and sold short stories to The Saturday Evening Post to support his lavish lifestyle. In 1937, he left for Hollywood to write screenplays, and in 1940, while working on his novel The Love of the Last Tycoon, died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four.Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed “the Jazz Age.” Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary documents of this period, in which the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1919), made millionaires out of bootleggers, and an underground culture of revelry sprang up. Sprawling private parties managed to elude police notice, and “speakeasies”—secret clubs that sold liquor—thrived. The chaos and violence of World War I left America in a state of shock, and the generation that fought the war turned to wild and extravagant living to compensate. The staid conservatism and timeworn values of the previous decade were turned on their ear, as money, opulence, and exuberance became the order of the day.Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in which unrestrained materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised.Plot OverviewNick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to have established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth. Nick’s next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night.Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at Yale and has social connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Islandhome to the established upper class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, an erstwhile classmate of Nick’s at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also learns a bit about Daisy and Tom’s marriage: Jordan tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose.As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsby’s legendary parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone “old sport.” Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsby’s extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair. After a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wife’s relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans’ house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to drive into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand, and he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal—his fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to provethat Gatsby cannot hurt him.When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that Gatsby’s car has struck and killed Myrtle, Tom’s lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle, but that Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtle’s husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George, who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots himself. Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby’s life and for the emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects that just as Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsby’s power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him “great,” Nick reflects that the era of dreaming—both Gatsby’s dream and the American dream—is over.Character ListNick Carraway - The novel’s narrator, Nick is a young man from Minnesota who, after being educated at Yale and fighting in World War I, goes to New York City to learn the bond business. Honest, tolerant, and inclined to reserve judgment, Nick often serves as a confidant for those with troubling secrets. After moving to West Egg, a fictional area of Long Island that is home to the newly rich, Nick quickly befriends his next-door neighbor, the mysterious Jay Gatsby. As Daisy Buchanan’s cousin, he facilitates the rekindling of the romance between her and Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is told entirely through Nick’s eyes; his thoughts and perceptions shape and color the story.Nick Carraway (In-Depth Analysis)Jay Gatsby - The title character and protagonist of the novel, Gatsby is a fabulously wealthy young man living in a Gothic mansion in West Egg. He is famous for the lavish parties he throws every Saturday night, but no one knows where he comes from, what he does, or how he made his fortune. As the novel progresses, Nick learns that Gatsby was born James Gatz on a farmin North Dakota; working for a millionaire made him dedicate his life to the achievement of wealth. When he met Daisy while training to be an officer in Louisville, he fell in love with her. Nick also learns that Gatsby made his fortune through criminal activity, as he was willing to do anything to gain the social position he thought necessary to win Daisy. Nick views Gatsby as a deeply flawed man, dishonest and vulgar, whose extraordinary optimism and power to transform his dreams into reality make him “great” nonetheless. Jay Gatsby (In-Depth Analysis)Daisy Buchanan - Nick’s cousin, and the woman Gatsby loves. As a young woman in Louisville before the war, Daisy was courted by a number of officers, including Gatsby. She fell in love with Gatsby and promised to wait for him. However, Daisy harbors a deep need to be loved, and when a wealthy, powerful young man named Tom Buchanan asked her to marry him, Daisy decided not to wait for Gatsby after all. Now a beautiful socialite, Daisy lives with Tom across from Gatsby in the fashionable East Egg district of Long Island. She is sardonic and somewhat cynical, and behaves superficially to mask her pain at her husband’s constant infidelity.Daisy Buchanan (In-Depth Analysis)Tom Buchanan - Daisy’s immensely wealthy husband, once a member of Nick’s social club at Yale. Powerfully built and hailing from a socially solid old family, Tom is an arrogant, hypocritical bully. His social attitudes are laced with racism and sexism, and he never even considers trying to live up to the moral standard he demands from those around him. He has no moral qualms about his own extramarital affair with Myrtle, but when he begins to suspect Daisy and Gatsby of having an affair, he becomes outraged and forces a confrontation.Jordan Baker - Daisy’s friend, a woman with whom Nick becomes romantically involved during the course of the novel. A competitive golfer, Jordan represents one of the “new women” of the 1920s—cynical, boyish, and self-centered. Jordan is beautiful, but also dishonest: she cheated in order to win her first golf tournament and continually bends the truth.Myrtle Wilson - Tom’s lover, whose lifeless husband George owns a run-down garage in the valley of ashes. Myrtle herself possesses a fierce vitality and desperately looks for a way to improve her situation. Unfortunately for her, she chooses Tom, who treats her as a mere object of his desire.George Wilson - Myrtle’s husband, the lifeless, exhausted owner of a run-down auto shop at the edge of the valley of ashes. George loves and idealizes Myrtle, and is devastated by her affair with Tom. George is consumed with grief when Myrtle is killed. George is comparable to Gatsby in that both are dreamers and both are ruined by their unrequited love for women who love Tom.Owl Eyes - The eccentric, bespectacled drunk whom Nick meets at the first party he attends at Gatsby’s mansion. Nick finds Owl Eyes looking through Gatsby’s library, astonished that the books are real.Klipspringer - The shallow freeloader who seems almost to live at Gatsby’s mansion, taking advantage of his host’s money. As soon as Gatsby dies, Klipspringer disappears—he does not attend the funeral, but he does call Nick about a pair of tennis shoes that he left at Gatsby’s mansion. Analysis of Major CharactersJay GatsbyThe title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved this lofty goal by participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities. From his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty and longed for wealth and sophistication—he dropped out of St. Olaf’s College after only two weeks because he could not bear the janitorial job with which he was paying his tuition. Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in World War I in 1917. Gatsby immediately fell in love with Daisy’s aura of luxury, grace, and charm, and lied to her about his own background in order to convince her that he was good enough for her. Daisy promised to wait for him when he left for the war, but married Tom Buchanan in 1919, while Gatsby was studying at Oxford after the war in an attempt to gain an education. From that moment on, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, and his acquisition of millions of dollars, his purchase of a gaudy mansion on West Egg, and his lavish weekly parties are all merely means to that end.Fitzgerald delays the introduction of most of this information until fairly latein the novel. Gatsby’s reputation precedes him—Gatsby himself does not appear in a speaking role until Chapter III. Fitzgerald initially presents Gatsby as the aloof, enigmatic host of the unbelievably opulent parties thrown every week at his mansion. He appears surrounded by spectacular luxury, courted by powerful men and beautiful women. He is the subject of a whirlwind of gossip throughout New York and is already a kind of legendary celebrity before he is ever introduced to the reader. Fitzgerald propels the novel forward through the early chapters by shrouding Gatsby’s background and the source of his wealth in mystery (the reader learns about Gatsby’s childhood in Chapter VI and receives definitive proof of his criminal dealings in Chapter VII). As a result, the reader’s first, distant impressions of Gatsby strike quite a different note from that of the lovesick, naive young man who emerges during the later part of the novel.Fitzgerald uses this technique of delayed character revelation to emphasize the theatrical quality of Gatsby’s approach to life, which is an important part of his personality. Gatsby has literally created his own character, even changing his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby to represent his reinvention of himself. As his relentless quest for Daisy demonstrates, Gatsby has an extraordinary ability to transform his hopes and dreams into reality; at the beginning of the novel, he appears to the reader just as he desires to appear to the world. This talent for self-invention is what gives Gatsby his quality of “greatness”: indeed, the title “The Great Gatsby” is reminiscent of billings for such vaudeville magicians as “The Great Houdini” and “The Great Blackstone,” suggesting that the persona of Jay Gatsby is a masterful illusion.Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.(See Important Quotations Explained)As the novel progresses and Fitzgerald deconstructs Gatsby’s self-presentation, Gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything on his dreams, not realizing that his dreams are unworthy of him. Gatsby invests Daisy with an idealistic perfection that she cannot possibly attain in reality and pursues her with a passionate zeal that blinds him to her limitations. His dream of her disintegrates, revealing thecorruption that wealth causes and the unworthiness of the goal, much in the way Fitzgerald sees the American dream crumbling in the 1920s, as America’s powerful optimism, vitality, and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth.Gatsby is contrasted most consistently with Nick. Critics point out that the former, passionate and active, and the latter, sober and reflective, seem to represent two sides of Fitzgerald’s personality. Additionally, whereas Tom is a cold-hearted, aristocratic bully, Gatsby is a loyal and good-hearted man. Though his lifestyle and attitude differ greatly from those of George Wilson, Gatsby and Wilson share the fact that they both lose their love interest to Tom.Nick CarrawayIf Gatsby represents one part of Fitzgerald’s personality, the flashy celebrity who pursued and glorified wealth in order to impress the woman he loved, then Nick represents another part: the quiet, reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East. A young man (he turns thirty during the course of the novel) from Minnesota, Nick travels to New York in 1922 to learn the bond business. He lives in the West Egg district of Long Island, next door to Gatsby. Nick is also Daisy’s cousin, which enables him to observe and assist the resurgent love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. As a result of his relationship to these two characters, Nick is the perfect choice to narrate the novel, which functions as a personal memoir of his experiences with Gatsby in the summer of 1922.Nick is also well suited to narrating The Great Gatsby because of his temperament. As he tells the reader in Chapter I, he is tolerant, open-minded, quiet, and a good listener, and, as a result, others tend to talk to him and tell him their secrets. Gatsby, in particular, comes to trust him and treat him as a confidant. Nick generally assumes a secondary role throughout the novel, preferring to describe and comment on events rather than dominate the action. Often, however, he functions as Fitzgerald’s voice, as in his extended meditation on time and the American dream at the end of Chapter IX. Insofar as Nick plays a role inside the narrative, he evidences a strongly mixed reaction to life on the East Coast, one that creates a powerful internal conflict that he does not resolve until the end of the book. On the one hand, Nick is attracted to the fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of New York. On the other hand, he finds that lifestyle grotesque and damaging. This inner conflictis symbolized throughout the book by Nick’s romantic affair with Jordan Baker. He is attracted to her vivacity and her sophistication just as he is repelled by her dishonesty and her lack of consideration for other people. Nick states that there is a “quality of distortion” to life in New York, and this lifestyle makes him lose his equilibrium, especially early in the novel, as when he gets drunk at Gatsby’s party in Chapter II. After witnessing the unraveling of Gatsby’s dream and presiding over the appalling spectacle of Gatsby’s funeral, Nick realizes that the fast life of revelry on the East Coast is a cover for the terrifying moral emptiness that the valley of ashes symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this insight demonstrates, he returns to Minnesota in search of a quieter life structured by more traditional moral values.Daisy BuchananPartially based on Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, Daisy is a beautiful young woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nick’s cousin and the object of Gatsby’s love. As a young debutante in Louisville, Daisy was extremely popular among the military officers stationed near her home, including Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lied about his background to Daisy, claiming to be from a wealthy family in order to convince her that he was worthy of her. Eventually, Gatsby won Daisy’s heart, and they made love before Gatsby left to fight in the war. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she chose instead to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy lifestyle and who had the support of her parents.After 1919, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, making her the single goal of all of his dreams and the main motivation behind his acquisition of immense wealth through criminal activity. To Gatsby, Daisy represents the paragon of perfection—she has the aura of charm, wealth, sophistication, grace, and aristocracy that he longed for as a child in North Dakota and that first attracted him to her. In reality, however, Daisy falls far short of Gatsby’s ideals. She is beautiful and charming, but also fickle, shallow, bored, and sardonic. Nick characterizes her as a careless person who smashes things up and then retreats behind her money. Daisy proves her real nature when she chooses Tom over Gatsby in Chapter VII, then allows Gatsby to take the blame for killing Myrtle Wilson even though she herself was driving the car. Finally, rather than attend Gatsby’s funeral, Daisy and Tom move away, leaving no forwarding address.Like Zelda Fitzgerald, Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is capable of affection (she seems genuinely fond of Nick and occasionally seems to love Gatsby sincerely), but not of sustained loyalty or care. She is indifferent even to her own infant daughter, never discussing her and treating her as an afterthought when she is introduced in Chapter VII. In Fitzgerald’s conception of America in the 1920s, Daisy represents the amoral values of the aristocratic East Egg set.Themes, Motifs & SymbolsThemesThemes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.The Decline of the American Dream in the 1920sOn the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circumscribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular 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 overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz music—epitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday night—resulted ultimately in the corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. A person from any social background could, potentially, make a fortune, but the American aristocracy—families with old wealth—scorned the newly rich industrialistsand speculators. Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving underworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.Fitzgerald positions the characters of The Great Gatsby as emblems of these social trends. Nick and Gatsby, both of whom fought in World War I, exhibit the newfound cosmopolitanism and cynicism that resulted from the war. The various social climbers and ambitious speculators who attend Gatsby’s parties evidence the greedy scramble for wealth. The clash between “old money” and “new money” manifests itself in the novel’s symbolic geography: East Egg represents the established aristocracy, West Egg the self-made rich. Meyer Wolfshiem and Gatsby’s fortune symbolize the rise of organized crime and bootlegging.As Fitzgerald saw it (and as Nick explains in Chapter IX), 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. The main plotline of the novel reflects this assessment, as Gatsby’s dream of loving Daisy is ruined by the difference in their respective social statuses, his resorting to crime to make enough money to impress her, and the rampant materialism that characterizes her lifestyle. Additionally, places and objects in The Great Gatsby have meaning only because characters instill them with meaning: the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg best exemplify this idea. In Nick’s mind, the ability to create meaningful symbols constitutes a central component of the American dream, as early Americans invested their new nation with their own ideals and values.Nick compares the green bulk of America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. Just as Americans have given America meaning through their dreams for their own lives, Gatsby instills Daisy with a kind of idealized perfection that she neither deserves nor possesses. Gatsby’s dream is ruined by the unworthiness of its object, just as the American dream in the 1920s is ruined by the unworthiness of its object—money and pleasure. Like 1920s Americans in general, fruitlessly seeking a bygone era in which their dreams had value, Gatsby longs to re-create a vanished past—his time in Louisville with Daisy—but is incapable of doing so. When his dream crumbles, all that is left for Gatsby to do is die; all Nick can do is move backto Minnesota, where American values have not decayed.The Hollowness of the Upper ClassOne of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth, specifically, how the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from and relate to the old aristocracy of the country’s richest families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes’ invitation to lunch. In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, epitomized by the Buchanans’ tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker.What the old aristocracy possesses in taste, however, it seems to lack in heart, as the East Eggers prove themselves careless, inconsiderate bullies who are so used to money’s ability to ease their minds that they never worry about hurting others. The Buchanans exemplify this stereotype when, at the end of the novel, they simply move to a new house far away rather than condescend to attend Gatsby’s funeral. Gatsby, on the other hand, whose recent wealth derives from criminal activity, has a sincere and loyal heart, remaining outside Daisy’s window until four in the morning in Chapter VII simply to make sure that Tom does not hurt her. Ironically, Gatsby’s good qualities (loyalty and love) lead to his death, as he takes the blame for killing Myrtle rather than letting Daisy be punished, and the Buchanans’ bad qualities (fickleness and selfishness) allow them to remove themselves from the tragedy not only physically but psychologically.MotifsMotifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.GeographyThroughout the novel, places and settings epitomize the various aspects of the 1920s American society that Fitzgerald depicts. East Egg represents the old aristocracy, West Egg the newly rich, the valley of ashes the moral and social decay of America, and New York City the uninhibited, amoral quest for money and pleasure. Additionally, the East is connected to the moral。
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The Great GatsbyChapter 1Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,I must have you!"--THOMAS PARKE D'INVILLIERSChapter 1In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret grieves of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought--frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon--for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction--Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him--with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as theGreat War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe--so I decided to go east and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said, "Why--yees" with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm season and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road."How do you get to West Egg village?" he asked helplessly.I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees--just as things grow in fast movies--I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides.I was rather literary in college--one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the "Yale News"--and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man." This isn't just an epigram--life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals--like the egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact end--but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.I lived at West Egg, the--well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard--it was a factual imitation of some H?tel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion.Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires--all for eighty dollars a month.Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven--a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy--even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach--but now he'd left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest.It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it--I had no sight into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens--finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner.Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body--he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage--a cruel body.His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked--and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts."Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are." We were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch."I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped thetide off shore."It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end.The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling--and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall.Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it--indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise--she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression--then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room."I'm p-paralyzed with happiness."She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had.She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker.(I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)At any rate Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again--the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth--but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east and how a dozen people had sent their love through me."Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically."The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all night along the North Shore.""How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!" Then she added irrelevantly, "You ought to see thebaby.""I'd like to.""She's asleep. She's two years old. Haven't you ever seen her?""Never.""Well, you ought to see her. She's----"Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder."What you doing, Nick?""I'm a bond man.""Who with?"I told him."Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.This annoyed me."You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East.""Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more."I'd be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else."At this point Miss Baker said "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I started--it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room.Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room."I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.""Don't look at me," Daisy retorted. "I've been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.""No, thanks," said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, "I'm absolutely in training." Her host looked at her incredulously."You are!" He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."I looked at Miss Baker wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before."You live in West Egg," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody there.""I don't know a single----""You must know Gatsby.""Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?"Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind."Why CANDLES?" objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year."She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.""We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed."All right," said Daisy. "What'll we plan?" She turned to me helplessly."What do people plan?"Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger."Look!" she complained. "I hurt it."We all looked--the knuckle was black and blue."You did it, Tom," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to but you DID do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a----""I hate that word hulking," objected Tom crossly, "even in kidding.""Hulking," insisted Daisy.Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here--and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself."You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or something?"I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way."Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently."I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read 'The Rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?""Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone."Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be--will be utterly submerged.It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved.""Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them.What was that word we----""Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. "This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things.""We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun."You ought to live in California--" began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair."This idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are and you are and----" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again. "--and we've produced all the things that go to make civilization--oh, science and art and all that.Do you see?"There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me."I'll tell you a family secret," she whispered enthusiastically. "It's about the butler's nose. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose?""That's why I came over tonight.""Well, he wasn't always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people.He had to polish it from morning till night until finally it began to affect his nose----""Things went from bad to worse," suggested Miss Baker."Yes. Things went from bad to worse until finally he had to give up his position."For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened--then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom's ear whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing."I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a--of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn't he?" She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation."An absolute rose?"This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing but a stirring warmth flowed from her as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said "Sh!" in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond and Miss Baker leaned forward, unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether."This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor----" I said."Don't talk. I want to hear what happens.""Is something happening?" I inquired innocently."You mean to say you don't know?" said Miss Baker, honestly surprised."I thought everybody knew.""I don't.""Why----" she said hesitantly, "Tom's got some woman in New York.""Got some woman?" I repeated blankly.Miss Baker nodded."She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don't you think?"Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom and Daisy were back at the table."It couldn't be helped!" cried Daisy with tense gayety.She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me and continued: "I looked outdoors for a minute and it's very romantic outdoors. There's a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He's singing away----" her voice sang "----It's romantic, isn't it, Tom?""Very romantic," he said, and then miserably to me: "If it's light enough after dinner I want to take you down to the stables."The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn't guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking but Idoubt if even Miss Baker who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy skepticism was able utterly to put this fifth guest's shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing--my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.Daisy took her face in her hands, as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl."We don't know each other very well, Nick," she said suddenly."Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding.""I wasn't back from the war.""That's true." She hesitated. "Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything."Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn't say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter."I suppose she talks, and--eats, and everything.""Oh, yes." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?""Very much.""It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about--things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.""You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so--the most advanced people. And I KNOW.I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything."Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated--God, I'm sophisticated!"The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said.It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the "Saturday Evening Post"--the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand."To be continued," she said, tossing the magazine on the table, "in our very next issue."Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up."Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. "Time for this good girl to go to。