Generally speaking, different perspectives of study can be pided as following: character analysis, the theme, writing style, symbols and American society。 Whereas the most of the studies are about the novel’s theme American dream。 Marius Bewley’s Scott Fitzgerald’s Criticism of America could probably be the earliest analysis criticizing the American dream。 “The Great Gatsby embodies a criticism of American experience-not of manners, but of a basic historic attitude to life-more radical than anything in James’ own assessment of the deficiencies of his country。 The theme of Gatsby is the withering of the American dream” (Authur 223)。 The Great Gatsby is like a shattered American dream。 It means that the causes lead to failure no matter American dream or Gatsby’s dream to some extent look the same。 There still have many other discussions about the American dream, such as Roger Lewis’s Money Love and Aspiration in The Great Gatsby, John F。 Callahan’s F。 Scott Fitzgerald's Evolving American Dream: The "Pursuit of Happiness" in Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, and The Last Tycoon。 文献综述

      In China, many scholars have studied on The Great Gatsby since 1983 when the Great Gatsby was translated into Chinese by Wu Ningkun, mainly discussing its theme, symbols and practical significance。 Its theme American dream is also the hottest topic。 According to Zhang Lilong, “They fail not because they are weak willed, or they don’t make enough efforts, but because the dream is just the past which is irreversible” (Zhang 109)。 The ending of The Great Gatsby indicates that American dream is unrealistic, because the dream has changed step by step。 The Great Gatsby is actually a depiction of the process of the disillusionment of the American dream。 Scholars have studied from different aspects to explore American dream better。

      Some critiques have probed into Gatsby’s dream and his tragedy。 Wang Yujuan argued that “the Gatsby’s dream is the American dream” (Wang 113)。 In Fu Xiaofan’s article On the American Dream in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, he analyzed Gatsby’s dream from money and love, presented his tragedy to prove the inevitability of dream’s evolvement。 “On the one hand, the American dream means money for Gatsby。 If he has money, he can do anything he wants。 On the other hand, his dream is Daisy the goddess in her mind” (Fu 56)。 Chen Yuanyuan and Chen Dingbin analyzed that the Gatsby’s dream is doomed to failure for lack of objective conditions which is one of the aspects to realize the American dream, so social background plays an important role in the novel。来,自,优.尔:论;文*网www.chuibin.com +QQ752018766-

In summary, The Great Gatsby is an outstanding novel which is worth reading and criticizing。 The Gatsby’s dream which reflects American dream is doomed to fail for many reasons, but there is no exact analysis about the causes of the failure of the Gatsby’s dream。 Therefore, this paper is written to reveal the causes lead to Gatsby’s tragedy and dream’s evolvement from three perspectives on the basis of former studies, combining all the related studies。 All of those above researches conducted on The Great Gatsby both at home and abroad are useful for my thesis。

This thesis tries to explore the reasons of Gatsby’s failure from three parts。 The first part talks about the Gatsby’s character flaws by showing his behaviors which are contrary to his actual image。 The second part tends to analyze the gap between upper class and Gatsby with some characters as examples。 In the last part, social background will be introduced which results in failing。