The Narrative Strategies In The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby,ranked the second out of“The 100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20^th Century”selected by the Board of the Modern Library in 1998,has firmly established F.S.Fitzgerald's position as one of the representatives of“The Lost Generation”.The term narratology,emerging in 1969,includes such narrative strategies as the narrative situation,the narrative level,the narrative rhetoric,the narrative person,the narrative focalization and the narrative ethics,etc.This thesis conducts an in-depth analysis of the narrative strategies of The Great Gatsby within the framework of narratology.In terms of the narrative person,the experiencing self not only reveals the big economic gap of the Americans living in the 1920s,but also shortens the distance between readers and the events of the story.The narrating self demonstrates Nick as a reliable narrator,the theme of“disillusionment of American dream”and Fitzgerald's ideal view of value.Changes between the experiencing self and the narrating self evince Nick's attitudes towards Jordan from naivety to maturity as well as his mental changes from being kept in the dark to the awareness of the truth of Gatsby's identity.As for the narrative focalization,the internal focalization retains the characters'mystery,articulates their complicated emotions and initiates readers'meditation on the characterization of the story.The external focalization describes the characters'external behaviors,which provides for readers imaginative space of their inner activities and presents clearly logical sequences of the development of the story.Changes between the internal focalization and the external focalization show that Gatsby is a tragic hero and that readers can experience spatial and chronological effects from both spatial experience and temporal dominance.In terms of the narrative ethics,Gatsby's love ethics based on economic status,social status and intense emotion indicates the historical ethic situation and Fitzgerald's ideal ethics from Nick's external point of view as well as Nick's,Gatsby's and Daisy's internal points of view.Nick's family ethics is embodied in the democratic-respectful and loving-helpful relationship between the two generations from Nick's internal and external points of view,which further epitomizes Fitzgerald's ideal ethics.The implications of the thesis can be summarized in two respects.On the one hand,this study can expand the dimension of the narrative research,provide enlightenments for literature teaching and researching,and promote the application and wide popularity of theories on narratology proposed or developed by Chinese scholars such as Shen Dan,Luo Gang,Nie Zhenzhao and Jiang Shouyi in addition to offering some interdisciplinary inspirations for other disciplines.On the other hand,the analysis of“disillusionment of American Dream”can offer inspirations for the proper realization of Chinese Dream and the discussion of ethics can provide some feasible suggestions on how to build our socialist country more effectively and harmoniously.