Lost In The American Dream

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, who is the spokesman for the Jazz Age, is widely recognized to be one of the most important novelists in the literary history of America. In his short and frustrated life, he wrote five novels and one hundred and seventy eight short stories. In his works, he unmasks the hypocrisy and emptiness of America in the 1920s under the superficial uproar and vanity, examines an entire generation's search for the elusive American dream of wealth and happiness and scrutinizes the consequences of that generation's adherence to false values. Many characters in his works, like the author himself, pursue a life of luxury and dissipation, dreaming of realizing their personal ideals, but their dreams are inevitably smashed by the relentless reality. Among all his works, The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night are considered his finest achievement of his literary career.The disillusionment of the American dream is the common theme of The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night. Critics have done intensive research on it. As to the theme of the former, Malcolm Cowley focuses on the conflict between the old world and the new world. Edmund Wilson pays attention to the contradiction between the past and the present. Some others explore the theme from the perspective of sociology of consumption. As far as the theme of the latter is concerned, Eugene White holds that Dick's breakdown is due to his own choices which are wrongly made. Milton Stern concludes that Dick's hope and dedication are those of his nation's dream and his collapse is not the personal collapse, but the metaphorical collapse of the American dream. Others probe it from the relationship between love and the American dream. Although critics have analyzed the theme of each novel from many perspectives, few people have ever attempted to probe systematically into it in relation to these two novels. So the limitation of their research is obvious. A more thorough and systematic study on the theme of these two novels is necessary and worthwhile. The reasons for choosing the theme of these two novels as the research subject are as follows: on one hand, The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night vividly reflect the Jazz Age whose economy was very prosperous. During this period many speculators made a fortune overnight and thus became the idol of many people. The American dream had unprecedented attraction. Another character of this age was the decline of spirit and the decay of morality. Hedonism was prevalent. Wealth was regarded as the symbol of success. Under this circumstance, the collapse of American dream was inevitable. Therefore, the research on the theme of these two novels can not only function as an effective warning but also implicate a realistic meaning. On the other hand, as a good illustration of the collapse of the American dream, Fitzgerald has a keen insight to it. The study of the theme of his two representative works can offer a systematic and thorough comprehension of the theme and its development. The inevitability and roots of the disillusionment of the American dream may be comprehended intensively.Apart from the Introduction and the Conclusion, Chapter One through the Chapter Three forms the main body of the thesis. The first part is a detailed explanation of the evolution of the American dream. The original American dream stresses both spiritual life and material life, but later it has ultimately become corrupt with gradual overemphasis laid on its material aspect. Fitzgerald keenly detects its tendency of corruption and gives sober reflection on it in his novels The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night.Chapter Two expounds the disillusionment of Gatsby's American dream. The dream of wealth and the dream of love constitute Gatsby's American dream. The former is the means of realizing the latter and the latter is the goal of realizing the former. Young Gatsby cherishing traditional American dream models on Franklin and tries to realize his ideal through his diligence and toil. But later he begins to make money by hook or crook under the influences of Dan Cody. The wealthy and pretty Daisy who comes from the upper class becomes the embodiment of Gatsby's American dream. In order to win his first love back through wealth he makes a fortune overnight by the illegal bootlegging. Realizing the dream of his spiritual life by adopting a material approach symbolizes the corruption of his dream. Daisy, the embodiment of his American dream as well as the representative of the vain and sophisticated upper society, shifts the crime onto him. Losing life and love symbolizes the collapse of Gatsby's American dream. The tragedy of Gatsby is due to his misshaped incarnation and corrupt approach to realize it. Besides his tragedy also indicates that Gatsby's ideal is unreachable in the rotten world.Chapter Three of this thesis focuses on the disillusionment of Dick's American dream. Just like Gatsby's American dream, Dick's dream also has an embodiment—Nicole. Before her appearance, Dick, who wants to realize his American dream by combining his psychiatric profession with his marriage, is ambitious in his career and morally perfect. He devotes more than a decade to cure his mad wife Nicole and attempts to turn the upper society in to a "psychological Eden". Nicole's recovery should be the symbol of Dick's dream but after that she betrays him and turns to her lover Tommy Barban. During the course of curing Nicole, Dick himself is corrupted by the upper society instead of changing the world around him. Losing his love, career and noble personality, Dick, who is exhausted both physically and spiritually, goes back to his hometown alone. It seems that Dick has realized his dream by marrying his love in cohtrast to Gatsby who never achieves his, but the dream that has been realized is not the original one which is pure and aspiring. Although the original American dream is good in nature, it is illusive to realize the dream which has been corrupted in the hedonistic age. So what Dick has realized is only an illusive one. This novel animadverts on the illusive nature of the American dream to a larger degree and exposes the inevitability of the disillusionment of the American dream against the relentless and corrupted American society.To sum up, this thesis arrives at the conclusion that the collapse of the two heroes' American dream is first due to their illusive ideal of love. The second reason for their failure is that in a dark world where there only exist material entertainment and excessive dark desires, in the place where there only exists shallowness and selfishness, an initially ambitious man as Gatsby and Dick who hold all the desires of America is doomed to failure. Both The Great Gatsby and 'Tender Is the Night are all involve the theme of the disillusionment of American dream but the former mainly focuses on the sense of failure rooted in the fact that the dream has not been realized while the latter exposes a deeper sense of failure—what has been achieved is not the original dream. Thus the writer makes a further animadversion on the illusive nature of the American dream.