【正文】 ald met Zelda Sayrethe little daughter of the Supreme Court justice in Alabama. To marry Sayre, he strived to make money to let his wife live a rich life. Jazz age was the ten years that Fitzgerald and Sayre lived in an easy and luxurious life. But good time do not last long, Sayre was diagnosed schizophrenia. For his wife and daughter, Fitzgerald had to write for Hollywood for the high payer, on the other hand, he could not endure that his works were revised. What is the worse, the entire world sank into great depression in 1929 and the Fitzgerald time was lost. His works were not paid attention. At the same time, he began to drink excessively and he defaulted to hand in the manuscripts. As a result, periodical offices and newspaper offices stopped to appoint the manuscripts successively. On December 21st, 1940, Fitzgerald died for the reason of heart attack caused by the long time intemperance. Before his death, he went bankrupt and required to hold “the cheapest funeral” in his testament. Actually, all of Fitzgerald’ life 2 was a breaking of American dream. He did his best to live in the high class。 nevertheless, he surrendered to the money society and died in tragedy. The generation of American Dream had its own specific history background. Its origin could date back to the time when a great number of European immigrants came to this land. They had strong desire to get freedom and equality. Besides, some people who were Puritans held lofty ideality. They built up from nothing and worked independently. During the process of adapting to and fighting with the nature as well as the Britain colonists, a kind of American spirit gradually was formed. However, these immigrants did not form an “American Dream” with mon characteristics. Some of them were to get rid of the persecution of the old world and build a “city upon a Hill” according to their own beliefs. Some of them were to look for an uncultivated land to realize their own political and economic purpose. Some of them were to make money and seek the legendary market. Most people wanted 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。 on the contrary, the gap between rich and poor was increasingly obvious. Affected by the American dream, people crowded into the big cities and wanted to achieve success, wealth and social status relying on their own hard work. However, under the cruel social reality, the American dream turned into bubble shadow and the people of this time were lost and confused. In addition, because of the impact of economic and the materialism around all the America, people of all the classes were running for the money. As a result, the moral decayed, the value was lost, capitalism39。 however, the American transcendental superiority has bee the experiential superiority and the humble feelings lacking transcendent. For normal Americans, the American dream has been a nightmare that cannot be realized. The development of American literature reflects the different kinds of breaking of American dream well. Of all the writers, Fitzgerald is one of the best writers who describe how the American dream bees a nightmare. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an extraordinary short novel. Although it is not the most important masterpiece of Fitzgerald, it was also studied and was even made into a film. As a love story, it shows how time destroys love and how love revenges people. From the social point of view, this story is against the clock and that is the most distinctive part. It is a story about Benjamin Button, who was born as a 4 seventy years old man and died as a newborn baby. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was written in 1922, when the American economic developed quickly. Americans are immersed in the American dream they have realized. The author showed the breaking of American dream using Benjamin’s dark birth. This novel reflects the breaking of American