论文总字数：30567字

摘 要

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby 1

1.2 Need of the study 2

2. Literature Review 4

3. Analysis of the Dual Hero in The Great Gatsby 6

3.1 Dual hero in characters 6

3.1.1 Image of Gatsby 6

3.1.2 Roles of Nick 7

3.1.2.1 The narrator of the novel 8

3.1.2.2 The agent of the author 9

3.2 Dual hero in themes 10

3.3 Reasons for the application of dual hero 11

4. Conclusion 14

References 15

Acknowledgments

Upon the accomplishment of this paper, I’d like to appreciate people who brought me assistance to its writing from the bottom of my heart. If I had not had their encouragement and guidance, I wouldn’t have completed it.

Firstly, I’d like to show my gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Qiu Liping. In preparation for the paper, it took her too much time to read my paper, offering me a number of constructive proposals. Without her constant instructive suggestions and criticism, there is no way to complete it.

Besides, I am also particularly thankful for all the professors and scholars who provided me with their direct and indirect help, giving me various literature references to polish my thesis.

Finally, I want to express my appreciation to my parents and friends. With their constant encouragement and understanding, I gain lots of inspiration and energy to accomplish my thesis.

Abstract

The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, is the representative novel of the famous American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald in the 20th century. The publication of this novel made Fitzgerald occupy a pivotal position in the history of modern American literature even the world literature. It is likely to be considered that this novel tells us a tragic love story between Gatsby and Daisy. However, The Great Gatsby is not a simple one, which presents us the American social life of the jazz era, and reveals the essence of the society. The book, through the fate of the two protagonists who represent Fitzgerald’ s emotional and rational selves respectively, presents their own life experiences from different narrative. The application of dual hero makes the novel achieve the unity of content and form, embodies the author’ s exquisite and mature artistic skills, and depicts vividly American society of the 1920s in many aspects. Based on the dual protagonist, this paper explores its application in the novel, especially in terms of characters and themes, expressing the author’s dual vision through the binary protagonist. It is hoped that this essay will bring some inspirations to researchers on the relevant study of dual hero, and at the same time, it can give us a profounder insight into this novel.

Keywords: The Great Gatsby; dual hero; Gatsby; Nick; themes

中文摘要

《了不起的盖茨比》发表于1925年，是20世纪美国著名作家弗朗西斯·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德最具代表性的作品。小说的问世使菲茨杰拉德在美国现代文学史上占据举足轻重的地位。大多数读者通常把它看作一个关于盖茨比追求黛西的凄凉爱情故事，但这并不是一部简单的作品，作者向读者再现了爵士时代美国的社会风貌，并揭示了社会本质。全书通过两个人物以不同的叙事视角来阐述各自的人生经历，二元主角的运用使小说达到了内容与形式上的统一，体现了精湛成熟的艺术技巧，立体的体现了20世纪20年代的美国社会，深刻地揭露了美国梦必然走向破灭的本质。论文立足于二元主角，探讨其在小说的应用，尤其是在人物与主题方面，通过二元主角表达作者双重视觉。希望本研究能够激励更多学者对二元主角进行相关研究，同时，能使我们对这本小说的内容和主题有更深刻、锐利的洞察。

关键词：《了不起的盖茨比》；二元主角；盖茨比；尼克；主题

Introduction

1.1 Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), as the spokesman and laureate of the 1920s, is seen as one of the most distinguished novelists of “the Lost Generation”. Born in a middle- and upper- class family in St. Paul, Minnesota, his family moved to New York in 1899 and did not return to their hometown until 1907, but Fitzgerald always considered himself as a Midwestern man. Although his ancestors were rich and wealthy, Gatsby’s family had declined since his parents’ generation. The family’s economic and social status has largely influenced his basic attitude towards life and literature. Throughout his life, he was shrouded in the shadows of the past, the failures and frustrations of youth. What’s more, he took too much time and energy to pursue money, power and title. Because his purpose of writing was not pure, Fitzgerald was despised by some critics for a long time. However, it was these experiences that enabled him to maintain an attitude of suspicion and isolation, to enjoy himself while being able to stand on the sidelines, and to achieve a kind of unique view and style.

In American literature, it is generally acknowledged that this novel is one of the great pieces. After its publication in 1925, Thomas Stearns Eliot spoke highly of it, regarding it as “the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James”. In the letter to the editor of The Scribner’s, Maxwell Perkins, he wrote that he thought the novel was about the best American novel ever written. Fitzgerald displayed not only his insight into the American society but also his understanding of American Dream which Jay Gatsby represented. However, upon being published, most critics held negative evaluations on this novel. Fitzgerald remained obscure for ten years during which his writing was unpopular. He died in 1940, just before America joined World War II, at the age of 44. It was not until ten years after death that the genius of his writing came into full recognition. Nowadays, if we have another chance to reread this novel, not only does it strike us with its large assimilation of the twenties era, but also we can have a profound understanding of its theme.

In different novels, different authors employ various narrative perspectives. There are two kinds of narrative methods commonly used in traditional novels. One is the author’s omniscient third- person narrative, the other is the autobiographical first-person narrative. Fitzgerald abandoned these two methods and adopted the narrative method which was originated by Henry James, an outstanding novelist in the 19th century, and then developed by Joseph Conrad and Edith Wharton. He first adopted the new first-person narrative method in The Great Gatsby, known as dual hero, in order to achieve his desired artistic height and reflect this era without any prejudice. The Great Gatsby is both a story about Gatsby and a story about Nick. The two characters are parallel, which constitutes a phenomenon of dual hero.

1.2 Need of the study

The Great Gatsby, which is known as the classic of Fitzgerald, plays an integral part in American even the world literature. Due to the vivid and true portrayal of the living conditions of the 1920s, it is often regarded as one of the most elaborately- constructed novel after those of Henry James. At the same time, because of its thorough, vivid and unique stylistic achievements, the novel has received great attention and appreciation from countless critics. However, most of the interpretation and appreciation of the book is based on traditional literary criticism, or focus on the exploration of the theme of the story and the profound meaning of the thought and so on. The Great Gatsby exquisitely presents the American Gilded Age in the jazz age. What’s more, researches on dual hero are too much. The novel is presented by two different narrative perspectives of Nick and Gatsby, which compare and complement with each other. This kind of narrative mode is beneficial to enlarge the narrative space of the novel, enhance the richness of the story’s plot and make it have deeper ideological connotation. This thesis analyzes the application of dual hero in characters, themes and the reasons. Theoretically speaking, this new first- person narrative method can give scholars more hints at studying The Great Gatsby from new research perspectives. To sum up, the study on analysis of the dual hero in this book can provide some enlightening thoughts on the theme and enhance the readers’ reinterpretation of connotations of the novel and American Dream.

2. Literature Review

It is generally considered that The Great Gatsby is not only a novel seen as the author’s biography, bur also it thoroughly depicts the real society of American in the 1920s. Since its publication, The Great Gatsby has attracted countless critics to explore it through a number of angles, such as the American Dream, the structuralism, the symbolism, the main characters and so on.

There are many people committed to analyze the theme of American Dream. Wang Fei (2010) analyzes the disillusionment of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby from the perspective of Consumerism, including introducing the American Dream and dreams of the main characters, and then elaborating on the influence of consumerism on it. Sun Zhangpin (2005) carries a new study of the essence of the American Dream through the combination of two approaches. He gives a reflection of the American Dream, analyzes the development of Gatsby’s American Dream and gives an account of the withering of the American Dream through the analysis of the characterization of the protagonists.

Furthermore, some scholars also analyze this novel through other different directions. Xu Ke (2013) claims that it is necessary to re- interpret Daisy’s role in lens of feminism with the development of feminism. She analyzes the novel from its setting, narration, plot imagery and characterization to prove that Daisy is the victim rather than perpetrator. Ren Jing (2010) studies the symbolism of literature, colors, settings and American Dream in the Great Gatsby. Liu Jia (2010) mainly divides the thesis into three parts: analyze the archetypal characters, analyze the main symbols and analyze the archetypal themes, which enables readers have a better understanding of the characters and gain a deeper insight of the themes of this novel.

Some scholars are absorbed in the analysis of characters in this novel. Lv Jingjing(2007) declares that it is a story which is related to Gatsby, and tells the development of Nick’s life. Through the strict structure layout and the new narrative perspective, the novel expresses the theme of the disillusionment of the American dream in perfect artistic form. The author discusses the application of dual hero in the novel from the structure, the fate of the characters, the perspective of narration, and the theme. Zhou Yan (2004) aims to explore the author how to express his literary views through the narrative mode of dual hero. On the one hand, he explains the special double versions, which has a close relationship with the life experiences of the author. On the other hand, he mainly analyzes that the application of dual hero has an influence on expressing the double versions. Tang Lu (2004) gives a systematic research on the double vision which is employed in this novel from themes, characterization and Nick’s doubleness. He Shijie (2003) claims that there are two protagonists in the novel, one is Gatsby and the other is Nick. He illustrates the American Dream in terms of the conflict and integration of the dual hero between Gatsby and Nick.

3. Analysis of the Dual Hero in The Great Gatsby

For most of us, at the first sight of this novel’s title, The Great Gatsby, we are very likely to consider Gatsby as the main character. However, there is another character named Nick whose role is as important as Gatsby’s. In this novel, we can learn about two stories: one tells the development of Nick, and the other is about Gatsby’s process of pursuing wealth and love. The two stories have mutual complementation and promotion, which makes the structure of the novel in a perfect form of organization. In a sense, Nick’s image is paralleled with Gatsby’s, which forms the unique dual hero phenomenon in the novel.

3.1 Dual hero in characters

3.1.1 Image of Gatsby

This novel mainly describes the American Dream a Jay Gatsby from establishment to disillusionment. Throughout the whole story, the author reproduces the true society of the United States in the 1920s vividly and comprehensively, expressing people’s comments on moral standards, social and cultural practices and so on.

The hero of the novel, Jay Gatsby, was a determined, brave and ambitious person in the Jazz Age. Like Fitzgerald, he fell for a beautiful young woman, and similarly he lost the opportunity to get love on account of a lack of wealth. However, Gatsby did not give up. Instead he achieved great economic success on the strength of countless efforts and hard work. In the end, he entered the upper class of the society, and hoped to get the favor of the first lover again with his own wealth. However, Gatsby did not have a deep insight of what the real role of wealth played in that society and that era. The so-called love and American dream that he pursued were illusionary and untrue, and were completely not in turn with the requirements of the real society. The wealth and graciousness shown to people only attracted people’s suspicions and jealousy about him. What was even more lamentable was that Jay Gatsby did not recognize the despicable and selfish nature of the upper class even though he died. As such a tragic figure, Gatsby is actually a total embodiment of Fitzgerald himself. From Gatsby, we can see clearly that the author’s retrospection and have a thorough understanding of his self- examination of the days gone by. What’s more, what the novel conveys about the infinite regret and obscure criticism of Jay Gatsby is also a sense of Fitzgerald’ s emotion and self-criticism in the pursuit of one’s own life and the ideal of reality.

On the tenth anniversary of The Great Gatsby being republished to the public, the American Blue House decided to add the novel to the Modern Series. Fitzgerald wrote a preface for being re-launched at the invitation of the publishing house: Now that the book was to be republished, the author here would like to say something off his chest. During the ten months of writing this book, the author made unprecedented efforts to maintain the purity of his artistic conscience. Anyone who read the novel would see that although there was still space for improvement, it seemed that the author had a clear conscience in terms of real or near- true credibility, because he tried his best to make his imagination honest and trustworthy.

The Great Gatsby is a real portrayal of society in the jazz age in the United States. Although the main character is fictitious, Gatsby truly reflects a number of characteristics of that era, which makes us easier to have a sense of entering the story and makes us gradually believe the story is true to life.

3.1.2 Roles of Nick

The well-known critic Mizener remarked, “The novel is Gatsby’s story as well as Nick’s, because it is told in the first person narrative mode by a narrator who is also one of the characters” (Mizener, 1959: 187). In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald chose a connective figure named Nick Carraway, who was not the leading character, as the narrator of the novel. As a common linkman, Nick boosted the development of character relationships in the story. The novel tells a love story between Gatsby and Daisy, his first lover, through Nick’s narration. The image of Nick, who was the first one to appear in the novel, is complicated. Not only is he a narrator of the whole story, but also as the author’s agent, he is an objective and comprehensive spectator to understand the whole event.

3.1.2.1 The narrator of the novel

If we consider Gatsby as a follower of the American Dream, Nick is a faithful witness. The way in which he narrates the story provides a kind of objectivity to the development of the whole event. Nick takes on the responsibility to retell the story, and everything our readers know comes from what Nick sees and hears. Given this responsibility, Nick, whose identity is a sympathetic listener, is established at the beginning of the story.

Shortly after his graduation in 1915, Nick participated in the Great War One. After the war, he, “enjoyed the counter- raid so thoroughly that I came back restless, and instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed the ragged edge of the universe”(Fitzgerald, 1994: 3). As a result, he was determined to go to the East to seek his fortune by learning the bound business. Because of some similarities between Nick and Gatsby who also participated in the Word World One and lived in West Egg, Nick can have a through narration and evaluation towards Gatsby. Nick, whose function was like a tie, connected all the characters together. What’s more, as Gatsby’s intimate neighbor, Daisy’s cousin, Tom’s classmate and Jordan’s lover, it is he that is at the heart of the entire relationship. This kind of relationships among the characters makes Nick exist everywhere, which is beneficial for him to narrate the whole story to our readers.

At the beginning of the novel, Nick gave himself such comments, “I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores” (Fitzgerald, 1994: 1). It was this nature that allowed Nick to collect large quantities of information that he can or cannot witness. Nick told readers what was happening or had happened at that time in three ways. The most common method that he employed is to present what he experienced to readers directly. The second way is that the information, which was from others’ narration, was narrated by himself or by other people’s mouth. Besides, it is occasional that Nick also reconstructed these events from other channels, such as newspapers, servants or his own imagination based on his own personal judgments. Nick, who stood at the edge of the story at first, however, with the development of the plot, owing to his special position Nick gradually became involved with the story and enabled him to witness and describe the whole event. In order to let Nick tell the event, the author keeps him present by all means. For example, Nick was on the scene when Gatsby and Daisy reunited and when Tom and his mistress met. In addition, if Nick does not know some of the facts, the author would allow Nick to get them from the other people who had the first-hand material. For example, Nick and readers learn that there was a love experience between Gatsby and Daisy five years ago through Jordan Baker, who was their witness in Louisville.

In the process of narrating the tragic story of Gatsby, the image of Nick is becoming full. Not only is he is a witness of Gatsby’s pursuit of the American Dream from its establishment to its disillusionment, but also he represents what he sees, what he hears and what he experiences. That is to say, The Great Gatsby is not a novel only about Jay Gatsby’s story, and is also Nick’s story.

3.1.2.2 The agent of the author

In the Great Gatsby, not only is Nick Carraway a successful story teller, but also an agent of the author, especially from the moral aspect. As a moral embodiment, he apparently shows what Fitzgerald wants to convey to us: the whole story, the American Dream, the society of the United States, his thoughts and so on. From this point of view, we can view Nick as the true protagonist of this novel. However, it is certainly not a negation of Gatsby’s position and significance in this novel. What we try to do is analyze the narrator from another different angle, who is a character throughout the whole story. In addition, with the development of the plot, he gradually forms a mature and full image.

As a young man in the 1920s, on account of feeling that the Midwest was not the warm center any more, he came to the East to find the means of livelihood. But what happened here made Nick disappointed: the East, which represented civilization and rationality, became a place without soul and spirituality in the process of people’s self-improvement. Just a year later, Nick gradually penetrated the nature of the American upper class, which was of falseness and indifference, degeneration and vulgarity, cowardice and selfishness. Consequently, Gatsby embarked on the road of self-destruction uncontrollably. As a cold-eyed bystander, who maintained traditional morality, Nick, despite avoiding self-destruction, found that he could not continue to live in this dirty city. He had to go back to his homeland in the west, which symbolized innocence, youth and warmth.

In terms of his family and social background, there is no one better than Nick, who can take on the responsibility as the spokesman of moral standards in the novel. He, born in an orthodox family and educated well, had a strong traditional morality. As a result, Nick was neither depressed by the way people live in the upper class or the arrogance of their self-righteousness and superciliousness, nor deterred by Gatsby’s wealth. So objectively speaking, Nick had the basic elements of being a fair moral judge. As a participator in the story, Nick’s ideology changed a lot with the development of the story. In the novel, for the deterioration of people’s values and moral standards in the eastern society, Nick showed his attitude from tolerating at the beginning to criticizing unequivocally in the end, which represented the whole process of Nick’s perfection and maturity in personality and moral responsibility.

3.2 Dual hero in themes

In this book, the author reveals the essence of the American Dream through characters’ different perspectives to our readers. In a sense, Gatsby and Nick both failed in the process of achieving their “American Dream” respectively. Although Gatsby succeeded materially, he collapsed spiritually; although Nick’s spirit was purified and perfected, he did not acquire material wealth which measured success in the eyes of the common people. Besides, Fitzgerald employed “East Egg” and “West Egg”, which were the same in shape and size but different from each other in other dimensions, to symbolize the two kinds of wealthy upper class in the United States. At the same time, Nick represented the downfallen aristocrat, who had the title of noble, but he did not have the right to inherit property; Gatsby represented the nouveau riche—— “new aristocracy”, but he could not really ascend to the rank of the aristocracy. They struggled and strove for their different “American Dream”, but the ultimate result was the breakdown of their dreams. Gatsby’s tragedy and Nick’s failure symbolized the disillusionment of the American Dream, revealing the reality of the United States in the 1920s.

3.3 Reasons for the application of dual hero

The application of dual hero has a close connection with the era where Fitzgerald lived. The Jazz Age refers to the period which starts from the end of World War I in 1919 and ends with the Great Depression in 1929, that is, the 1920s. Not only did World War I have a great impact on Fitzgerald and the young generation, but also it involved American society in tremendous changes. Traditional moral values had collapsed, young people, who were called “Lost Generation”, had lost faith, and they felt depressed and disillusioned in the aspect of spirit. However, although it went through a hard time during the war, the United States witnessed a most prosperous era in American history. With the development of the economy in the United States in such an unexpected speed after the World War One, idealism was gradually replaced by materialism. Americans led a luxurious and fashionable life, indulging in pleasure. What’s more they thought that there was no purpose and significance in life, and they held a skeptical attitude towards everything. What people pursued most was success related to money and status, and no one cared about whether the way to achieve success was legal or illegal.

Fitzgerald was both a follower and an advocate of this trend of the era. He employed his own life experiences as the blueprint to the novel, demonstrating the unique society, life, spiritual values and the ambivalent and sentimental mind of people in the social transition period of the 1920s. For one thing, he was deeply immersed in it, and at the same time he regarded it as the material of his works. For another, Fitzgerald also had a sharp awareness of the hidden crisis behind the superficial prosperity.

As a result, different from the traditional narrative means in his previous works, Fitzgerald transformed the narrative techniques and perspectives in The Great Gatsby. He adapted a new perspective to make the content and form of the novel unify perfectly. Fitzgerald employed one of the characters in this novel—— Nick to narrate the whole story. Not only did he explain his own life experiences, but also to a greater extent, he told Gatsby’s story to the readers without any trace. It was Nick’s perspective that gave us a chance to understand the development of the story better. This not only revealed the inner world of Nick, as the narrator and character of the novel, but also enabled him to describe other characters in the novel naturally and objectively. From the unique point of view based on Nick, it is easy for readers to enter the story, feeling that it is the character that is telling the story instead of an outside author. It will give a sense that the hero of the story speaks directly to us, forgetting the fact that we are reading an imaginative story by the author.

The Great Gatsby is not a simple novel which tells us Gatsby and Daisy’s tragic love story. In addition to Gatsby, Fitzgerald set up another protagonist named Nick to tell the story in the form of first- person narration. He expressed himself and the society profoundly by the two characters: one is consistent with Gatsby, and one is in line with Nick. Just like the author Fitzgerald, the leading character Gatsby and the narrator Nick are Mid-westerners and they are shaped by the environment where they grew up. The dual hero represents the two poles of “American Dream”: one is infatuated, and the other is awake. The application of the dual hero fully expresses the author’s dual vision, and it plays a very important role in the success of this book. The author’s double vision is also vividly reflected in the two protagonists, which enriches the image of the characters, and ensures this book a compact and unified structure, and make the themes of the novel more thought-provoking.

In the novel, the double version touches on the aspects of the themes, the character shaping, and the narrative perspective and so on. To begin with, with regard to the themes, Fitzgerald holds contradictory attitudes. For money, he yearns for but despises it; for the American Dream, he looks forward to but suspect it. What the author’s double version reflects in the novel is that whether the society can corrupt or not; that whether Gatsby can win his lover back who is the heroine and the symbol of the American ideal or not; that whether one can realize his “American Dream” be virtue of perseverance and great efforts. In characterization, double vision reflects that the leading character Gatsby and the narrator Nick represent the author emotionally and rationally. Through the contrast between the two, Fitzgerald portrayed that modern people of the 1920s were confronted with the hesitation between sense and sensibility.

Conclusion

The Great Gatsby, which is generally regarded as the most representative works written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, offers considerable research angles to scholars, such as the American Dream, the structuralism, the symbolism, the main characters and so on. This essay aims to seek a new prospective to analyze this novel. This thesis, based on the Dual Hero, discusses the unique point of view based on Nick, the author’s double version, and analyzes the image of the two characters in the novel. Generally speaking, through the discussion and analysis, we can gain an insight into the theme and the significance of The Great Gatsby. Meanwhile, we are more aware that this novel is indeed a great success. Hope this thesis can provide some inspiration for readers to continue to pave the way for interpreting and appreciating this novel.

References

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