The Disillusionment Of The American Dream In The Great Gatsby And Tender Is The Night

F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the most representative writers of the 1920s. His vivid description of the American society in his age wins him the title of"the Poet Laureate of the Jazz Age."This thesis is intended to discuss the disillusionment of the American dream of his two most important novels The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night. With a close examination of the major figures and important facts of Fitzgerald's personal experience, the thesis discusses the characters'deep emotions associated with love and the American dream. We could know that Fitzgerald, who saw the splendor and prosperity of the Jazz Age, was also aware of the spiritual emptiness and moral decadence of the society.In both these two novels, the central characters Jay Gatsby and Dick Diver are the pursuers of the American dream in the twenties. In their youth they have been inspired to pursue the American dream, and then the beautiful and rich girls from the upper class become the embodiment of their dream. The rising young man wins the rich girl and then is destroyed by her wealth or her relatives, which is the theme of the disillusionment of the American dream in the Jazz Age.The young man Jay Gatsby is the central character in The Great Gatsby. In order to enter into the upper class he devotes his whole life to win back his first love Daisy Fay, but at last his dream is destroyed by Daisy's husband Tom Buchanan and he becomes a total failure of the American dream. Another young man Dick Diver is the central character in Tender Is the Night, he devotes more than a decade of life to cure his mad wife Nicole, a beautiful and wealthy girl of a millionaire, but after her recovery Nicole leaves him and turns to his lover Tommy Barban soon. Dick goes back to his hometown alone. So Dick's American dream also fails in the end.The great man Benjamin Franklin is the myth of the American dream in history, however, the great writer Scott Fitzgerald portrayed the disillusionment of the American dream in the Jazz Age. The reason is that the transformations of the values of traditional morality make people not believe in any hero but pursue individual consumption, enjoyment and indulgence. Fitzgerald deeply felt the spiritual emptiness and moral...