The Archetypal Analysis Of The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the greatest novelists in American literature. In 1925 he achieved splendid artistic success with his masterpiece The Great Gatsby.This paper, taking the archetypal criticism and The Bible as the theoretical bedrock, attempts to perform sufficient analysis on the mythological archetypes in this novel including the characters, the structure, the symbols and the theme in order to reveal the novel's theme-the disenchantment of the American Dream.The thesis consists of four chapters, plus the introduction and the conclusion. The introduction gives a brief review of Fitzgerald's literary achievements and his masterpiece The Great Gatsby. The first chapter is a short introduction to the concept of the American Dream and illustrates that it is the written theme of The Great Gatsby. The second chapter is about the critical perspective on archetypal criticism, and the reasons for its application to the archetypal interpretation of the novel. Chapter Three and Chapter Four focus on the archetypal criticism of the novel's characters, structure, symbols and theme as well as their illustration of the novel's theme-the disillusionment of the American Dream. At last the paper concludes that by using the archetypes, Fitzgerald highlights the written theme of the novel, reveals the sordid reality of America and foresees its doom and failure.