偉大的蓋茨比英文讀書報告

2024年3月15日發(作者：裸粉)

BOOK REPORT

The Great Gatsby

★ information about the author：

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896--1940).As an American author of novels and short

stories, he was regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20

th

century.

In his life, he was strapped for money and genius. He ud to have both of them,

but lost them finally. After his death, some critics said that he died young and lost

all the genius becau of his corruption and lf-abandonment.

He wrote 4 long novels and 150 short stories, including This Side of Paradi

(《塵世樂園》，1920),

The Beautiful and Damned （《美麗與毀滅》，1922）,

The

Great Gatsby （《偉大的蓋茨比》，1925）,

Tender Is the Night （《夜色溫柔》，

1934）,

The Love of the Last Tycoon（《最后一個影壇大亨》，1941）.

★ Jazz Age :

The time between 1918 and 1929 was called the “Jazz Age”. During this time, the

World War I was over and the Great Depression in the America hadn’t come yet.

The traditional dogma of the puritan disappeared and leading a life of pleasure

became popular in the public. This is an age of miracle, of art, of wasting money,

and full of taunt. He knew this age’s longing of romantic and its inanity in the root.

Everything emed to be feasible through modern technology. It is also known as

“the Roaring 20s”.

★ Plot and characters:

Nick (narrator)— a bond salesman, and neighbor to Gatsby.

Jay Gatsby— a young, mysterious millionaire later revealed to be a

bootlegger(私酒制造者).

Daisy Buchanan— an attractive young woman, Nick’s cousin and the

wife of Tom Buchanan.

Tom Buchanan— Daisy’s husband, an arrogant “old money”

millionaire.

Myrtle Wilson — Tom‘s mistress（情婦）.

George B. Wilson —He was Myrtle’s husband, a mechanic and owner of

garage.

The main events of the novel take place in the summer of 1922. Nick, a Yale

graduate and World War I veteran from the Midwest – who rves as the novel's

narrator – takes a job in New York as a bond salesman. He rents a small hou on

Long Island, in the village of West Egg, next door to the lavish mansion of Jay

Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire who holds extravagant parties but does not

participate in them. Nick drives around the bay to East Egg for dinner at the home

of his cousin, Daisy Fay Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, a college acquaintance

of Nick's. They introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, an attractive, cynical young golfer

with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. She reveals to Nick that Tom has

BOOK REPORT

a mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the "valley of ashes": an industrial

dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this

revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle to an apartment

they keep for their affair. At the apartment, a vulgar and bizarre party takes place.

It ends with Tom breaking Myrtle's no after she annoys him by saying Daisy's

name veral times.

As the summer progress, Nick eventually receives an invitation to one of

Gatsby's parties. Nick encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby

himlf, an aloof and surprisingly young man who recognizes Nick from their

same division in the war. Through Jordan, Nick later learns that Gatsby knew

Daisy from a romantic encounter in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He

spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the bay

from his mansion, hoping to one day rekindle their lost romance. Gatsby's

extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are an attempt to impress Daisy in the hopes

that she will one day appear again at Gatsby's doorstep. Gatsby now wants Nick to

arrange a reunion between himlf and Daisy. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his

hou, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially

awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. They begin an

affair and, after a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wife's

relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans' hou, Daisy speaks to

Gatsby with such undisguid intimacy that Tom realizes she is in love with

Gatsby. Though Tom is himlf involved in an extramarital affair, he is outraged

by his wife's infidelity. He forces the group to drive into New York City and

confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, asrting that he and Daisy have a

history that Gatsby could never understand. In addition to that, he announces to

his wife that Gatsby is a criminal who fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol

and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom

contemptuously nds her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that

Gatsby cannot hurt him. When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley

of ashes on their way home, they discover that Gatsby's car has struck and killed

Tom's mistress, Myrtle. Nick later learns from Gatsby that Daisy, not Gatsby

himlf, was driving the car at the time of the accident but Gatsby intends to take

the blame anyway. Myrtle's husband, George, fally concludes that the driver of

the yellow car is the cret lover he recently began suspecting she has, and ts out

on foot to locate its owner. After finding out the yellow car is Gatsby's, he arrives

at Gatsby's mansion where he fatally shoots both Gatsby and then himlf. Nick

stages an unttlingly small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan,

and moves back to the Midwest, disillusioned with the Eastern lifestyle.

★ What I think and feel:

The Great Gatsby reflects the collap of the American dream.

In the 1920s, easy money and relaxed social values have corrupted this dream,

especially on the East Coast.

To Gatsby, Daisy is an ideal image of holy and pure things, especially for Gatsby.

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But what she really cared about was money.

Sarah Churchwell es The Great Gatsby as a "cautionary tale of the decadent

downside of the American dream." The story deals with human aspiration to start

over again, social politics and its brutality and also betrayal, of one's own ideals

and of people. Using elements of irony and tragic ending, it also delves into

themes of excess of the rich, and recklessness of youth.

Others, like journalist Nick Gillespie, e The Great Gatsby as a story "about the

breakdown of class differences in the face of a modern economy bad not on

status and inherited position but on innovation and an ability to meet

ever-changing consumer needs." This interpretation asrts that The Great Gatsby

captures the American experience becau it is a story about change and tho

who resist it; whether the change comes in the form of a new wave of immigrants,

the nouveau riche, or successful minorities, Americans from the 1920s to modern

day have plenty of experience with changing economic and social circumstances.

As Gillespie states, "While the specific terms of the equation are always changing,

it's easy to e echoes of Gatsby's basic conflict between established sources of

economic and cultural power and upstarts in virtually all aspects of American

society." Becau this concept is particularly American and can be en

throughout American history, readers are able to relate to The Great Gatsby.

★

Something about the American dream

:

Historian James Adams:

A dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman,

unhampered by the barriers in the old civilizations, unrepresd by social orders

which had developed for the benefit of higher class.

★

Famous ntences:

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all

the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

★ It is the need to fight for what you believe in, show love to the things you care

about; a belief of achieving a better life through your diligence, constant efforts,

courage, and innovation but not through social status and other people’s aids.