The Contrastive Techniques in The Great Gatsby（2）

2.2.2 Nick vs. Gatsby
It is true that Nick Carraway begins by merely recording events and keeping a distance between himself and characters such as Buchanans and Gatsby. But he is soon caught up with the people and events around him. His sympathy for Gatsby grows until he not only feels responsible for him at his burial; he understands what Gatsby stands for. All this, however, does not mean that Nick can be totally identified with Gatsby against the Buchanans. On the contrary, Nick is completely different unlike Gatsby in most respects.
 Nick Caraway is sensitive and intelligent; he alters his evaluation of others as he learns more about them. He preserves a rational mind that makes him also realize what is wrong with Gatsby. Gatsby, on the other hand, is idealistic and romantic. His personality remains unchanging and static. His view of life remains one-sided and unreal at the end. For Gatsby, the material world has always been amorphous and only the world of dreams essentially real. Born in a society where inexhaustible possibilities seemed to dwell in the white palaces of the rich, Gatsby saw their accumulated booty as the instruments of their secret charm. His dream is timeless and incorruptible, but the woman and the world to which he weds his dream are both mortal and corrupted. So his dream is doomed to fail.
While Gatsby and the Buchanans guard their interests single-mindedly, Nick learns to see matters from others’ point of view and achieves moral insight and wisdom, which make him a more complete person. For example, Nick Carraway is the only person who is aware of the destructive flow of time and of the spiritual death that has overtaken Tom, Daisy, Jordan, and the people around them and Gatsby. In the afternoon that Gatsby fails to hold Daisy, Nick remembers   suddenly that it is his birthday.
I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade.
…Thirty----the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age (Chapter 7, 182).

 Nick acknowledges his subjection to time, recognizes the losses that it imposes on man, and, at the conclusion of this passage, the significance is twofold when he says, “so we drove on toward death through cooling twilight” (Chapter 7, 182). They are moving not only towards the death of Myrtle Wilson but the “portentous, menacing road” that will culminate in their own deaths. The novel indirectly traces Nick’s development, from detachment to participation, from unconcern to understanding, from a narrow, subjective outlook to a broad indulgence www.lwwzx.com 论文网
2.3 The contrast between dream and reality  
The most conspiring contrast in this novel is the conflict between dream and reality. American dream means that in America one might hope to satisfy every material desire and thereby achieve happiness. It is deceptive because it proposes the satisfaction of all desire as an attainable goal and identifies desire with material. Fitzgerald said, “American’s great promise is that something is going to happen, but it never does. American is the moon that never rose.” This indictment of the American dream could well serve as an epigraph for the protagonist Gatsby, the true heir to the American dream. He pursues an elusive dream, which even though sometimes within his grasp, continues somehow to evade him. With great magnitude of his glittering illusion and the single-mindedness, he tries to make it a reality. Nowhere is Gatsby’s romantic idealism more evident in his determination to conquer time, to make one instant of his life immortal. Throughout the novel, Gatsby seeks the recovery of his moment of fulfillment; he wants to obliterate time, to expunge the years of separation from Daisy, to annihilate everything except the instant that wed the fulfilled future and the wistful past. When Nick Carraway tells Gatsby that the past can’t be repeated, Gatsby is incredulous: “Can’t we repeat the past?....Why of course you can!”(Chapter 6, 148) In truth, his doomed hope is not only to repeat the past but to seize a never-ending magical moment with Daisy that would join pursuit and capture, seed-time and the harvest. But the tragedy of Gatsby is that he fails to understand that he can’t recapture the past (his fresh, new love for Daisy) no matter how much money he makes, no matter how much wealth he displays. Daisy, despite Tom’s coarseness and open unfaithfulness, refuses to leave the security of her established position for Gatsby’s adoration and precarious wealth. Gatsby scarifies his life on the alter of his dream, unaware that it is composed of the ephemeral stuff of the past

The cruel reality smashed Gatsby’s dream. Fitzgerald’s comment on the failure of Gatsby’s dream is also a statement on the failure of American dream. The contrast of the dream and the reality significantly indicates a moving away from faith and hope in a world where material interests have driven out sentimentality and faith. What is more, dream, even if it persists, is utterly helpless and defenseless against a material society. It can only be defeated. Gatsby is an example. Owing to his unrealistic dream, Gatsby’s fate turns out to be a tragedy. Because he isn’t conscious of his unrealistic dream of love and he doesn’t correctly handle contradictions between ideal and reality, Gatsby sinks into this kind of unreal dream so deeply that he can’t wake up. And the final result of Gatsby is surely miserable.3 Conclusion
     Fitzgerald’s fiction reveals the hollowness of the American worship of riches and the unending American dreams of love, splendor, and gratified desires and shows what American meant in terms of the reckless 1920s: prohibition, speakeasies, new cars, victory abroad, popular fads, and new wealth. The Great Gatsby presents the American scene during those riotous years. The novel is a superb recreation of the high-keyed, frantic atmosphere of the times.
   F. Scott Fitzgerald’s distinguishing styles and his creative writing skills are best exemplified in The Great Gatsby. The contrastive technique endows the novel with artistic glamour and profound connotation. The contrasts of scenes, of main characters as well as between the dream and the reality are extremely striking to the readers. These contrasts help the readers to have a better understanding of the Jazz Age, the personalities of the main characters and the American dream. The contrast of scenes shows the readers a vivid picture of 1920s with its surface prosperity and the underlying sadness. “Jazz Age”, “Age of the Flapper”, “Lawless Decade” are some of the labels pasted on the twenties. It is a time of youth, a time of profound cultural and social changes. The contrast of the main characters presents more clearly the different people in 1920s. People of that time have strong mind of pursuing money. One important purpose is to show off to others. They want to be admired and respected by others. They innocently believe that happiness lies in wealth and such admiration. They pursue a kind of extravagant life which is attractive with beauties, champagne and expensive cars and clothes. Unfortunately, they lose everything in the end. The sharp contrast between dream and reality not only explains Gatsby’s failure at the end, it also explains the meaninglessness of that age. In a word, these contrasts provide the readers with a panorama of 1920s. And in the contrast, the theme of the novel ----the disillusion of the American dream ----is strengthened. It can be said that the contrastive techniques contribute a great deal to the reveal of the tragic theme.

     Shortly before publication of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald wrote to John Peale Bishop, “(one of the) cheerfulest thing in my life (is)….the hope that my book has something extraordinary about it.” And it is because of Fitzgerald’s moral perspective and evaluation of 1920s in American society and his skillful craftsmanship that the book, so much a book of its era, detaches itself from its period to have meaning and significance for a later day.
Bibliography
[1] Chang, Yaoxin. A Survey of American Literature. Tianjing: Nankai University Press, 1991.
[2] Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Qingdao: Qingdao Press, 2003.
[3] Miller, James E. F. Scott Fitzgerald----His Art and Technique. New York: New York University Press, 1964.
[4] Tang, Soo Ping. York Notes on The Great Gatsby. Beijing: World Publishing Corporation, 1989.
[5] Wu, Dingbai. An Outline of American Literature. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 1998.
[6] Yang, Qishen. Selected Readings in American Literature, Volume 2. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Press, 1987.
作者信息：
姓名：林海艳