【正文】 ed to cast off the poor life in their hometown. For a long time, all of them were different people with different nationalities and traditions: The English, the Dutch, the French, the Scotchmen and the Irishmen. Thus, from the beginning, the land of the United States was placed many hopes and dreams. The rich resource without the owners and the rugged but broad environment made a result that the background of family and the social status were not the actual significance. Therefore, every believed that they are equal. The American dream is an iconic expression of American’s optimistic attitude towards life, an affirmation on human’s capacity of realizing the unlimited possibilities of existence. Although up till now, there is no fixed definition or exact expression to explain this term, some traces correlated to its meaning in many sources can be found. In Made in America: SelfStyled Success from Horatio Alger to Oprah Winfrey, Jeffrey Louis Decker wrote of the origin of the term the “American dream.” He states that “the term was not put into print until 1931, when middlebrow historian James Truslow Adams coined and used it throughout the pages of a book titled The 3 Epic of America”.1 Adams held that “The American dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. The American dream is to be understood as an ethical doctrine that is symptomatic of a crisis in national identity during the thirties. The newly invented dream calls out for a supplement to the outmoded narrative of individual uplift, which had lost its moral capacity to guide the nation during the Depression”2 American dream is a phenomenon that only America has. The American history is also the American dream. From the civil war to the early twentieth Century, American economy was in the highspeed development. But the economic development did not bring that Americans39。巴頓的人生奇旅》是 菲茨杰拉德 最著名的短片小說之一。 指 導 教 師 評 語 年 月 日 指 導 教 師 職稱 初評成績 答辯小組 姓名 職稱 教研室 組長 成員 答辯記錄： 記錄人簽字： 年 月 日 答辯小組意見： 組長簽字： 年 月 日 學院意見： 評定成績： 簽章 年 月 日 河北師范大學本科生畢業(yè)論文 文獻綜述 Literature Review F. Scott Fitzgerald is a wellknown American novelist for his great contribution to the American literature in the 1920s. Hemingway once recalled Fitzgerald and said that, “Since he can write such a good book as The Great Gatsby, I believe that he certainly be able to write a much better book”. A wave of enthusiastic study of his works mences in the last thirty years in China. A lot of scholars publicized their own distinctive views on his works. There are many observations and surveys of his works from different perspectives. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one of Fitzgerald’s famous short stories and it has been studied from many aspects. The following are the recent studies on the Jazz Age and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Yu Jianhua made an overall exploration of the American culture trends and literature overview in 1920s in The High Tide of American Literature, which had a specific introduction of entering into the Jazz Age. And he also discussed Fitzgerald, the famous representative of “the Lost Generation” from the origin and connotation. In the Chapter11 of A Survey of American Literature, Chang Yaoxin attempted to interpret the Jazz Age from its background and unique features, discovering and asserting the essence of life at that time, exposing and criticizing the utilitarianism view which influenced a whole generation. In The Short Stories of Fitzgerald: New Approaches in Criticism, Jackson R .Bryer mainly analysed the short stories of Fitzgerald from the novels’ style and art. In the techniques of Fitzgerald39。菲茨杰拉德是美國 20 世紀著名的小說家。 論文的主要內容 本論文分為三章，第一章分析本杰明與其父親、妻子和兒子的種種矛盾和利益沖突。《本杰明 the will and fate。也正是由于他奇特的人生軌跡， 本杰明，甚至 他的父親、 妻子 和 兒子都生活在一個悲劇當中。 his son could not treat him as a father。 for all that, he lost himself in the luxury and dissipation life. Over and above that, Fitzgerald had his writing dream。 《本杰明第三章從本杰明和本杰明的父親的角度，闡釋了美國夢的破滅，并分析從美國夢的破滅到對生命的嚴肅思考。司各特第二章分析了本杰明父親、本杰明和本杰明妻 子各自地位的變化，來展示他們的社會地位最終的幻滅。巴頓奇事》講述了本杰明離奇的人生故事。 dream and disillusionment。 本文主要分析《本杰明 his wife accepted him first, but they were finally separated. The misunderstanding and rejection between persons fully showed the inequality. The dream of emotion broke. A. Relation Between Benjamin Button and His Father “The Roger Button held an enviable position, both social and financial, in antebellum Baltimore. They were related to the This Family and That Family, which, as every Southerner knew, entitled them to membership in that enormous peerage which largely populated the Confederacy.”3 The beginning of the novel not only laid out many details for the birth of Benjamin, but also prepared for the breaking of Roger Button’s American dream. Baltimore is an important city in the south of America and it was regarded as the capital city instead of Philadelphia in the war. In this important city, the Roger Button has accumulated the wealth and the status. So when their first baby was ing, they decided to let him born in the hospital。 however, the girl’s father said that the poor boy had no choice to marry his daughter. The