Existence In Modern Cities

Crowned as the poet laureate of the Jazz Age and the spokesman of the Lost Generation,F.Scott Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century.With his spectacular account of the Jazz age,his opus depicts the extravagance and hedonism of the metropolis New York in the 1920 s,the disillusionment of American dream and the spiritual wasteland in the aftermath of the Great War.Among his numerous acclaimed stories and novels,three of his novels have portrayed the city of New York from different angles,respectively This Side of Paradise,The Beautiful and the Damned,and The Great Gatsby.These works illustrated the glamour of urban life,and the anxiety experience of urban people along the way of pursuing their dreams.A pioneer writer of the New Sensationalism School,a chronicler of modern Shanghai,and a dandy with great talent,Mu Shiying captured in his books the exciting speed,rapid pace,love and hate of urban life in metropolis Shanghai,among which frequently seen are cafes,night clubs,dance halls,and horse racks.The unusual and sometimes abnormal relationship between the male character and a femme-fatale that he was chasing is also center to his many novels.Through account of the thrills and meaninglessness of modern city,his works vividly demonstrate the anxiety of the age and its people.Cities are not only a kind of physical presence,but also an existence condition.In the works of both writers,there are recurring themes of romantic affairs,materialistic excess,and futile fight amidst anxiety and despair.From the perspective of existential thinking,this thesis aims,in a parallel study method,to analyze the characters' spiritual predicament in an absurd world with alienated people and personal relations and tries to explore people's responsibility by making choices through their free will in the representative works of both authors that depicted the jazz age of the west and the far east.Chapter One focuses on the cities,i.e.,New York and Shanghai in F.Scott Fitzgerald and Mu Shiying's novels.In this chapter the absurdity of the city as an existential condition will be demonstrated from three aspects,respectively the dance halls,mechanical strength and street views that are all typical of a modern city.Chapter Two will study the people living in modern cities,again,typical images such as flappers in New York and femme fatales in Shanghai,and their suitors are chosen to showcase urban dwellers' loneliness,objectification,and the alienation among people.Chapter Three expounds these characters' choice in the face of such absurdity of the world and alienated society.And the paper will end with an overall comparison of the two writers to look at their guidance for urban people's existential predicament through their artistic endeavors,and then point out limitations of this study and suggestions for future comparative studies of these two authors.