Heritage And Subversion:an Intertextual Study Of The Great Gatsby And Netherland

F. Scott Fitzgerald is trying to depict much broader and more profound meaning of the American Dream by his The Great Gatsby; an auto-biological story reflects the authenticity of the American spiritual life after the World War I. With the thematic meaning of disillusionment and detachment, the romantic concept of the arrangement of plot and characters are lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative. Joseph O’Neill’s stunning novel, Netherland, also conveys a resonant meditation on the dilemmas and universal significance. For immigrants, the American Dream is never decayed by the formidable life during the history of upheaval and predicament; instead, it percolates and is purified through the struggle. Wealth, love and honor unfolded one by one in the framework of the American Dream. The American Dream, as both its promises and disappointments are experienced by generations in a multicultural New York, teeming with possibilities for self-invention, as well as with unfathomable abyss for becoming lost or disillusioned. The dilemma of pursuing the dream is the haunting nightmare of everyone in this world. These critical subversions of the juxtaposition elements of both novels completely caused the essence of the thematic meaning changed, making the readers see more about themselves within the harmonious arrangement of the story. The literary study from home and abroad are mostly focus on the theoretical analysis, rarely from the perspective of the writing model and its cultural heritage, so this thesis is going to interpret the fictions under the guiding torch of Kristeva’s theory about intertextuality, it contributes a theory of literature language which may be utilized to provide an ideology of heritage and subversion from the perspective of socio-historical context. This thesis is going to analyze the subversive meaning of the American Dream through the process of origin, sublimity and demise by employing the theory of intertextuality, especially from the point of heritage, juxtaposition and subversion.The intertextuality focuses on the uncertainty and unbounded textual meaning. It is thus understood as the passage is constructed out of already existent discourse, which involves an altering of the former text-the interrelationship between the former text and the text itself. If texts are made up of bits and pieces of the social text, then the on-going ideological struggles which characterize language and discourse in society will continue to reverberate in the cultural text. From the subtle relationship between the experience of author and the forging of characters, to the connection of symbolic image that contributes to the development of the plot; from the spatial narrative pattern to the coincidental insight of the world; from the traditional writing style to the continuously reconstruct of the meaning, the signifier is never certain, thus the signified is overlapping and detonated by the text, mirroring the reflective meditation and humane concern. In literature, juxtaposition is a stylistic technique, in which two or more elements are put side by side so as to produce a specific effect upon the reader. It presents two seemingly discordant elements in a thematic, to purchase effective comparison and balance. At the same time, the subversive meaning within the multi-context paves the way for the intertextualized writing style and demonstrates the relationship between fiction itself and the former classic.