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1、 i The Contrastive Techniques in The Great Gatsby Abstract The Great Gatsby, with its depiction of “the Jazz Age”, marks the highest point of F. Scott Fitzgeralds artistic achievement. T. S. Eliot once concluded that it was the “first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James”. In this
2、novel, the author successfully employed the contrastive techniques, which endow the novel with artistic glamour and profound connotation. This paper intends to illustrate the contrastive techniques in terms of scenes, characters as well as dream and reality. The significance of these contrasts lies
3、in the fact that they help the readers to have a better understanding of the Jazz Age, the personalities of the main characters and the American dream. The careful deliberate employment of contrastive techniques not only testify to Fitzgeralds craftsmanship in planning and developing the novel, but
4、also contribute a great deal to the reveal of the tragic theme, that is, the disillusion of American dream. Key Words contrast, scene, character, dream, reality 1 Introduction F. Scott Fitzgeralds masterpiece The Great Gatsby shows us a vivid picture of the 1920s with its superficial prosperity and
5、underlying sadness. The failure of American dream and the crisis of value are well reflected in characters and the details of the novel. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald skillfully employed the contrastive techniques in terms of scenes, characters as well as dream and reality. These techniques not on
6、ly deepen the tragic theme, but also imparted the text a brand-new interpretation and profound artistic glamour. 2 The employment of contrastive techniques 2.1 The contrast of scenes The author gives us a vivid description of various scenes in the novel, among which the most impressive are the sharp
7、 contrast between Gatsbys parties and his funeral and the strong contradicts between the east and the west. These two pairs of contrastive scenes foreshadow Gatsbys tragical destination. 2.1.1 The parties vs. the funeral The Jazz Age is a time of broken dream, a time of flapper, a time of changes an
8、d a time of financial boom. Its clearly reflected in the description of Gatsbys parties. These parties are fashionable, but pointless. It is only a show-off of Gatsbys riches and material success. The crowds hardly know their host; many come and go without invitation. The music, the laughter and the
9、 faces, all blurred as one confused mass, show the purposelessness and the loneliness of the party-goers beneath their marks of relaxation and joviality. All this is typical of “the Jazz Age”, when many people lose belief in American dream and indulge themselves in drinking and dancing. The great ex
10、pectations which the first settlement of the American continent brings vanish, and so despair and doom set in. In his blue gardens, men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from
11、 the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with ii mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravag
12、es of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York-every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves.” (Chapter 3, 52) The exavagent life, the noisy people constitute Gatsbys parties. However, the de
13、piction of the fashionable and meaningless parties serves to highlight Gatsbys tragedy by contrasting the grandeur of his party with his violent death, with the frustration of his dream. Gatsbys funeral is rather deserted and cheerless compared with his parties. Its a record of human coldness. Nick
14、has invited some people to come to Gatsbys funeral. These people are all Gatsbys so-called friends. They find a lot of excuses for their absence because they know clearly that Gatsby is no longer useful for them. Gatsbys generous parties have not brought him even one friend. Whats more, Daisy, once
15、Gatsbys lover, the real killer, “hadnt sent a message or a flower”.(Chapter 9, 233) The sharp contrast between the exavagence of the parties and the coldness of the funeral reveals the hypocritical relationship among people and the moral degradation of the Jazz Age. 2.1.2 The East vs. the West In on
16、e sense, the moral conflict in the novel is resolved into a conflict between East and West-the ancient and corrupt East and the raw but virtuous West. Nick attributes his moral attitude to his Middle Western background. Nicks experience in the East results in his return with relief to the West: “Aft
17、er Gatsbys death, the East was haunted for me like that, distorted beyond my eyes power of correction. So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line, I decided to come back home.”(Chapter 9, 236) “Home”, it seems clear, is a place where t
18、he fundamental decencies are observed and virtue is honored. The East is a representation of sophistication and moral degradation while the West is the embodiment of virtue and harmony. In the novel, the author fabricated the East Egg and the West Egg whose geographical contrast shows the conflicts
19、of different values. Their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilation in every particular except shape and size. (Chapter 1, 6) The Buchanans live in white palaces of fashionable East
20、 Egg while Gatsby and Nick who comes to New York to deal with bond business live in less fashionable West Egg. East Egg is a paradise for upper-class society. Its more degraded and amoral. However, West Egg symbolizes hope, promise and reinvigoration. 2.2 The contrast of main characters In The Great
21、 Gatsby, Fitzgerald successfully delineated many impressive characters such as Gatsby, Tom, Nick, Daisy, Wilson, and etc. The contrast of their character and personality is striking in this novel, among which the contrast between Gatsby and Tom, between Nick and Gatsby are especially noticeable. Gat
22、sby is sensitive and idealistic, almost divine in his dedication to his love and faith. Although his wealth came from his criminal activities, Gatsby manages to hold the readers sympathy throughout. The whole- hearted dedication of Gatsby and his sincere belief in what he does make him heroic, and t
23、his submerges the unpleasant details so that they dont seem important in the final outcome. Compared with Gatsby, Tom is sinister and sly. “They are careless people,” as Nick describes them, “Tom and Daisy-they smashed up things and creature and then retreated back into their money or their careless
24、ness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess-they had made.” Tom is more sophisticated. When he finds that things are not moving to his favor, he is determined iii to arrange things to suit himself, no matter whom he hurts in the process. When he finds out
25、Gatsbys interest in his wife, for example, Tom is quick to force Gatsby to a showdown. It is not certain that Tom wants Daisy because he loves her. His desire to keep his wife may just reflect the pride of a man who refuses to have his wife taken away from him by another man. And added to this pride
26、 is Toms social consciousness. To surrender Daisy to a man who is his social inferior is too humiliating to bear. Gatsby, therefore, finds himself up against Toms ruthlessness and social arroganceTom, however, does not only smash up Gatsbys dream. After the accident, Gatsbys sentimental outlook prev
27、ents him from safeguarding himself against blame. Tom is quick to take advantage of this. He makes Gatsby bear the responsibility for Myrtles death. So Tom does not only destroy Gatsbys idealism, but also Gatsbys life. The Buchanans show how people can use their position to look down on others and l
28、ive their life carelessly. As Nick says about Daisy, “in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged” (Chapter 1, 24). It is this superior mind set that allows Tom to
29、cheat on his wife and allows him and Daisy to run away from the death of Myrtle. They need not worry about such things because they are too good for it. They can use their wealth and position to escape whatever they choose. That Tom is able to defeat Gatsby so easily, and goes unpunished points to t
30、he fact that, in a materialistic society, people like Tom, rich, ruthless and cunning, will always triumph. Idealism and sentimentality, especially when carried to the extreme, are sure to be taken advantage of by others.2.2.2 Nick vs. Gatsby It is true that Nick Carraway begins by merely recording
31、events and keeping a distance between himself and characters such as Buchanans and Gatsby. But he is soon caught up with the people and events around him. His sympathy for Gatsby grows until he not only feels responsible for him at his burial; he understands what Gatsby stands for. All this, however
32、, does not mean that Nick can be totally identified with Gatsby against the Buchanans. On the contrary, Nick is completely different unlike Gatsby in most respects. Nick Caraway is sensitive and intelligent; he alters his evaluation of others as he learns more about them. He preserves a rational min
33、d that makes him also realize what is wrong with Gatsby. Gatsby, on the other hand, is idealistic and romantic. His personality remains unchanging and static. His view of life remains one-sided and unreal at the end. For Gatsby, the material world has always been amorphous and only the world of drea
34、ms essentially real. Born in a society where inexhaustible possibilities seemed to dwell in the white palaces of the rich, Gatsby saw their accumulated booty as the instruments of their secret charm. His dream is timeless and incorruptible, but the woman and the world to which he weds his dream are
35、both mortal and corrupted. So his dream is doomed to fail. While Gatsby and the Buchanans guard their interests single-mindedly, Nick learns to see matters from others point of view and achieves moral insight and wisdom, which make him a more complete person. For example, Nick Carraway is the only p
36、erson who is aware of the destructive flow of time and of the spiritual death that has overtaken Tom, Daisy, Jordan, and the people around them and Gatsby. In the afternoon that Gatsby fails to hold Daisy, Nick remembers suddenly that it is his birthday. I was thirty. Before me stretched the portent
37、ous, menacing road of a new decade. Thirty-the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age (Chapter 7,
38、182). Nick acknowledges his subjection to time, recognizes the losses that it imposes on man, and, at the iv conclusion of this passage, the significance is twofold when he says, “so we drove on toward death through cooling twilight” (Chapter 7, 182). They are moving not only towards the death of My
39、rtle Wilson but the “portentous, menacing road” that will culminate in their own deaths. The novel indirectly traces Nicks development, from detachment to participation, from unconcern to understanding, from a narrow, subjective outlook to a broad indulgence 。 2.3 The contrast between dream and real
40、ity The most conspiring contrast in this novel is the conflict between dream and reality. American dream means that in America one might hope to satisfy every material desire and thereby achieve happiness. It is deceptive because it proposes the satisfaction of all desire as an attainable goal and i
41、dentifies desire with material. Fitzgerald said, “Americans great promise is that something is going to happen, but it never does. American is the moon that never rose.” This indictment of the American dream could well serve as an epigraph for the protagonist Gatsby, the true heir to the American dr
42、eam. He pursues an elusive dream, which even though sometimes within his grasp, continues somehow to evade him. With great magnitude of his glittering illusion and the single-mindedness, he tries to make it a reality. Nowhere is Gatsbys romantic idealism more evident in his determination to conquer
43、time, to make one instant of his life immortal. Throughout the novel, Gatsby seeks the recovery of his moment of fulfillment; he wants to obliterate time, to expunge the years of separation from Daisy, to annihilate everything except the instant that wed the fulfilled future and the wistful past. Wh
44、en Nick Carraway tells Gatsby that the past cant be repeated, Gatsby is incredulous: “Cant we repeat the past?Why of course you can!”(Chapter 6, 148) In truth, his doomed hope is not only to repeat the past but to seize a never-ending magical moment with Daisy that would join pursuit and capture, se
45、ed-time and the harvest. But the tragedy of Gatsby is that he fails to understand that he cant recapture the past (his fresh, new love for Daisy) no matter how much money he makes, no matter how much wealth he displays. Daisy, despite Toms coarseness and open unfaithfulness, refuses to leave the sec
46、urity of her established position for Gatsbys adoration and precarious wealth. Gatsby scarifies his life on the alter of his dream, unaware that it is composed of the ephemeral stuff of the past The cruel reality smashed Gatsbys dream. Fitzgeralds comment on the failure of Gatsbys dream is also a st
47、atement on the failure of American dream. The contrast of the dream and the reality significantly indicates a moving away from faith and hope in a world where material interests have driven out sentimentality and faith. What is more, dream, even if it persists, is utterly helpless and defenseless ag
48、ainst a material society. It can only be defeated. Gatsby is an example. Owing to his unrealistic dream, Gatsbys fate turns out to be a tragedy. Because he isnt conscious of his unrealistic dream of love and he doesnt correctly handle contradictions between ideal and reality, Gatsby sinks into this
49、kind of unreal dream so deeply that he cant wake up. And the final result of Gatsby is surely miserable.3 Conclusion Fitzgeralds fiction reveals the hollowness of the American worship of riches and the unending American dreams of love, splendor, and gratified desires and shows what American meant in terms of the reckless 1920s: prohibition, speakeasies, new cars, victory abroad, popular fads, and new wealth. The Great Gatsby presents the American scene during those riotous years. The novel is a super