The Loser In Tender Is The Night: Fitzgerald's Reflection On The American Masculinity

Fitzgerald is the representative writer of the "Lost Generation".His novels reflect the love and marriage views,career conception,and growing process of the young in the early 20 th century in the United States.Analyzing the masculinity of the most representative loser in Tender Is the Night can deepen the understanding of the characters and their destiny in the novel,and it also helps to explore the writer's strategies to resolve the male crisis.The masculinity of Dick,the male protagonist of the novel,is discussed in this article,based on the theoretical achievements of masculinity researches of Cornell,Mansfield and so on,the history of American masculinity,and the study results of consumerism and feminism in Tender Is the Night.Rosemary's changes from dependent to independent and Nicole's transformations from a a victim to a rebel are all considered to be important means of dispelling Dick's masculinity.Consumption and women turn Dick from a producer to a consumer,and even the goods.Furthermore,pacifism deprives the opportunity for men to build masculinity in the war.Women,consumption,and peace cause men fell into the masculinity crisis,which implies the dilemma of national identity positioning.Dick's anxiety is the externalization of the writer's spiritual world,and portraying Dick is a means of reflecting on masculinity.Fitzgerald provides American males represented by himself and Dick with another identity choice different from hegemonic masculinity through literary creation.Emotional writing style and unique narrative perspectives have become the way for writers to reshape himself.To some extent,all these reduced the oppression of traditional male identity on marginal men and women.The research found that Fitzgerald's reflection and modification of masculinity are more realistic than theorists' ideal masculinity.Reflecting masculinity is the rescue of Dick's gentle,sympathetic image.Dick is not a true loser.He ostracized himself to rebel against the persecution of hegemonic masculinity on the Marginalized masculinity and became a new male with a tragic heroic stance.And the new male conveyed the author's doubts and thoughts on the US national identity at the turn of the world in the early 20 th century.