【正文】 o some extent, Gatsby and Nick are part of Fitzgerald’s epitome and The Great Gatsby is an autobiographical novel. It is easy for readers to find a great deal of Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, from the legendary life of Gatsby. In 1917, Fitzgerald enlisted in the army as World WarⅠneared its end, and was stationed at Camp Sheridan in Montgomery, Alabama where he met and fell in love with a seventeen– year– old wild beauty named Zelda Sayre. Zelda finally agreed to marry him, but her overpowering desire for wealth, fun and leisure led her to delay their wedding until Fitzgerald published This Side of Paradise in 1920, earning enough money and fame to prove a success. Similar to Fitzgerald, Gatsby was a sensitive young man who idolized wealth and luxury and fell in love with a beautiful young woman, Daisy who partially based on Fitzgerald’s wife, while he stationed at a military camp in the south. Having bee a celebrity, Fitzgerald fell into a wild, reckless lifestyle of parties and decadence, while desperately trying to please Zelda by writing to earn money. It’s the same that Gatsby amassed a great deal of wealth at a relatively young age, and devoted himself to acquiring possessions and throwing parties that he believed will enable him to win Daisy’s love. It’s obvious for readers to find that Fitzgerald and Gatsby have close personal experiences as they do some research for Fitzgerald’s real life and for Gatsby’s in this novel, however, the change of people’s sense of value to life, caused by war is also similar with each other no matter in Fitzgerald’s times or in the society in which Gatsby lived in the novel. That is: the chaos and violence of war leave America in a state of shock, and the generation that fight the war turn to wild and extravagant living to pensate. The staid conservation and timeworn values of the precious decade are turned on their ear, as money, opulence, and exuberance bee the order of the day. If Gatsby represents one part of Fitzgerald’s personality, the flashy celebrity who pursued and glorified wealth in order to impress the woman he loved, then Nick represents another part: the quiet, reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East. Like Nick who is a thoughtful young man in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found the new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, he found himself in an era in which unrestrained materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East. Even so, like Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In many ways, The Great Gatsby represents Fitzgerald’s attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised. Fitzgerald’s individual experience relating with the fall of American Dream Just as Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonest, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsby’s power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him ―great‖, but the era of dreaming both Gatsby’s dream and the American dreamis over. Fitzgerald amplifying his individual experience Though Gatsby is part of Fitzgerald’s epitome, there is difference between them. What makes different is Fitzgerald universalizes his personal experience and widens his own horizon successfully, building a bridge between individual and society, which es to endow the hero, Gatsby a profound symbolical meaning. Gatsby is the epitome and symbol of self—made American Dream and his material success is the prolongation of American Dream: Gatsby is a vivid symbol of American Idealism. Just as the above— mentioned, the ―green light‖ echoing ―a fresh and green breast of the new world‖ makes Gatsby’s experiences as a metaphor of American experience. The ideal he sticks to can turn to be nothing but a terrible ―valley of ashes‖ instead of the oasis in the New Land. The amplified symbolism enriches the significance of the great work and shows care toward the general humanity and society. The American Dream’s deterioration The problem of American dream is closely related to the problem of how to deal with the past. America is founded through a dramatic declaration of independence from its own pastits European roots – and it promises its citizens the potential for unlimited advancement, regardless of where they e from or how poor their background are. Through American history, the West has been as a land of promise and possibility the very emblem of American ideals. Tom and Daisy, like other members of the upper class, have betrayed America’s democratic ideals by perpetuating a rigid class structure that excludes newers from its upper reaches, much like the feudal aristocracy that America had left behind. Gatsby, alone among Nick’s acquaintances, has the audacity and nobility of spirit to dream of creating a r