【正文】 mself is involved in an extramarital affair with Myrtle Wilson, is deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. Later, Gatsby?s car has struck and killed Myrtle. Nick learns from Gatsby that it is Daisy who is driving the car when the accident happens, but Gatsby will take the blame. Myrtle?s husband Gee soon finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, and moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby?s life and for the emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. The above is a brief summary of the novel. Though it tells us a story taking place over only a few months in a small area in the vicinity of Long Island, The Great Gatsby is a panorama of the entire American society in the Jazz Age, and a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole. On the surface it is a thwarted love between a man and a woman, but actually it is a story of the distorted American Dream disillusioned in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess, in which lies this novel?s social significance. 中原工學(xué)院外國語學(xué)院本科 畢業(yè)論文 2 2 A Panorama of American Society in the Jazz Age No one can finish reading The Great Gatsby without being impressed by the opulent parties with wild jazz music that Gatsby throws every Saturday night. The novel is an epitome of the whole American society, showing us a vivid picture of the Jazz Age. The Jazz Age, referring to the period after the end of World War I, through the Roaring Twenties, ending with the onset of the Great Depression, is a time of profound cultural and social changes. American people are torn between traditional values and new standards adopted by young people. Materialism Materialism can be clearly seen from the life of Daisy and Gatsby. The former only loves material luxury and cares for nothing else, while the latter does not love material luxury itself but thinks large fortune will bring him love and happiness. Daisy is Nick?s cousin, Tom?s wife, and the woman that Gatsby loves. She has promised to wait for Jay Gatsby until the end of the war, but after meeting Tom Buchanan and paring his extreme wealth to Gatsby?s poverty, she breaks her promise. Money, ease, and material luxury are what Daisy truly wants: “If Daisy really loved Gatsby as a poor young officer, it was because she was not so corrupted and sophisticated then. Even so, when she was faced with a choice between true love and money, she chose the latter.”(Xu, 1994) Gatsby is the protagonist of the novel. From Nick?s narration, we know Gatsby is a mysterious and wealthy young man. Every Saturday, his huge Gothic mansion in West Egg serves as the site of extravagant parties. He has been pursuing fame and wealth all his life with an ideal which he thinks can be realized. To fulfill his dream of getting Daisy back, he earns money by bootlegging and other illegal means because he believes that money can buy him love and happiness. Materialism and moneyworship pervaded in America during the 1920s. The people from various walks of life who attend Gatsby?s parties show the greedy chase for wealth. The quick rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism and people began 中原工學(xué)院外國語學(xué)院本科 畢業(yè)論文 3 to spend and consume at unprecedented levels. (Du, 20xx) Instead of some noble values, the goal which people were struggling for had bee material luxury. To make matters worse, the romantic idealism held by the American youth promoted their materialism. Car, house, beauty and so on, were symbols of their dream. They devote themselves into the pursuit of these things, of pleasure, excitement and novelty. No one can tell what on earth he was striving for, because everyone is striving for an unworthy illusion. “What they want is just living in dream, in illusion. But their dream is too far away from the reality and they are definite to fail, to lose.” (Zhang, Wang, 20xx) Immorality We notice that World War I is the background of the story. It had great impact on Americans. During the war, men had fought against the enemy in faraway lands and women had aggressively entered the workforce. When the war was over, the survivors went home and tried to return to normalcy. Meanwhile, young women decided that they were not willing to waste away their young lives waiting idly for spinsterhood。 they were going to enjoy life. However, the survivers were not able to do it. Instead, they became disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had faced made the social morality of earlytwentiethcentury America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The worse is that more and more people got involved in crime and illicit activities. In the novel, Gatsby?s business associate, Meyer Wolfsheim, is a notorious figure standing for the underworld. He is involved in anized crime, a