Leitmotif, Sonata, And Improvisation

The Great Gatsby, with its depiction of"the Jazz Age", marks the highest point of F. Scott Fitzgerald's artistic achievement. While the novel portrays the American dream in a symbolic way, it also produces a unique musical effect. This paper aims to explore the musical qualities concealed in the novel from three perspectives: character, structure and style, which correspond respectively to leitmotif, sonata and improvisation. From the microscopic perspective, reading the novel is like reading a combination of numerous leitmotifs. From the macroscopic perspective, the novel can be divided into three equally important parts (Exposition, Development, Recapitulation), which feature a typical sonata. From the combined perspective, the stylistic analysis leads to a conjunction between leitmotif and sonata in an improvisational way. And the study of musicality in the novel reveals that there lies a new way of interpreting a literary work, that is: musical analysis whose introduction into literature analysis will not weaken the value of a novel, but on the contrary may consolidate our understanding of an already acknowledged masterpiece.