尼克在《了不起的盖茨比》中的作用(英文)

Abstract: F. Scott Fitzgerald, the famous American novelist in the 1920s, is known as the spokesman and laureate of the Jazz Age. His writings caught the tone of age. The Great Gatsby,publishied in 1925, viewed as his masterpiece and an American classic as well, is still the hot subject by the critics in the literature. In the novel, with the character of Nick Carraway as the first-person narrator, Fitzgerald leads us to other characters and the world they live in through Carraway’s eyes. Carraway is the only character in the novel to exhibit, and hold onto, a sense of morals and decency throughout the novel. This paper is focused on the analysis of function of Nick Carraway, which consists of three parts: the first part is introduction, giving an overall view of  F. Scott Fitzgerald as a writer, his main achievements and a brief introduction of The Great Gatsby. The second part is to analyze the function of Nick from the aspects of novel structure , theme, point of view in narration and understanding for the roles with the contribution of abundant fresh examples. The third part is a summery, which gives an overall conclusion of significance of Nick , to show Fitzgerald’s distinctive handling of the novel.
Key words: Nick; Theme; Structure; Narration
摘  要：弗•斯科特•菲茨杰拉德是美国二十世纪初的著名作家。他被誉为是“爵士时代”的代言人和桂冠诗人,是美国人民的良知代言人。1925年出版的《了不起的盖茨比》奠定了他在美国文坛的地位。此书是一部美国经典，至今仍然被文学评论家们钟爱。该小说中的叙述者尼克是《了不起的盖茨比》中一个举足轻重的人物，他既是剧中人又是第一人称叙事人,用来娓娓道来故事的情节和意义。本文主要是对《了不起的盖茨比》一书中尼克的作用进行分析,论文包括引言,正文部分及结论部分。引言部分简要介绍作者和他的作品以及他在美国文学史上的地位和贡献,正文的部分通过分析对比和大量例证着重分析尼克在小说结构、主题、叙述角度以及女性角色理解方面所起的作用,结论部分是对其进行比较全面的概括从而更好的诠释《了不起的盖茨比》的艺术性和思想性。
关键词：尼克；主题；结构；叙事方式

Introduction :
Even if William Dean Howells and Mark Twain  thought that America would become the hope of the world, F. Scott Fitzgerald gradually found that this new world was all disaster. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived in the midst of the “roaring twenties”[1], was perceptive enough to understand that America was “a moon that never roses.” His masterpiece ,the Great Gatsby ,is central to the literature of the twenties, and it is in the mainstream of American realism as it emerged after the first world war. Fitzgerald is just the tragic hero of this period. He was born in 1896 in a St Paul middle-class family. His father was gentlemanly but unmercifully in business. With the financial aid of an aunt, Scott had an expensive education first in private schools, and then at Princeton. Due to the academic difficulties forced him out of Princeton in middle way in his junior year, he returned the following fall but left college permanently in 1917 to join the army. He was never sent abroad, but the most important event during the period of 15 months of service was his meeting Zelda Sayre in the same way as Gatsby meet Daisy .Zelda was a beautiful society girl, she liked him but was too expensive for him. After discharge from the army early in 1919, it seemed that he had no hope to marry Zelda. However, with the publication of This Side of Paradise  in 1920, Fitzgerald finally got the reputation and gained the money to support this woman with such great financial and social expectation. After they got married, the Fitzgerald’s lived in expensive style, and their need for money was tremendous. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote at a rapid speed and made a fabulous amount of money, which went as soon as it came. There were two collections in the early twenties, Flappers and Philosophers and Tales of the Jazz Age. The two collections were“ legends of America’s adolescence before pain set in”. Fitzgerald became “the angel of the twenties”[2]. In 1922, Fitzgerald’s second novel was published ,The Beautiful and Dammed. In 1925, he produced his masterpiece The Great Gatsby in Paris. After this he wrote one more important book, Tender is the Light, and some collections of short stories such as All the Sad Yound Men and Traps at Reveille. The Fitzgerald’s were not always happy in their married life. Since Zelda was not an emotionally and mentally strong woman, she had to be put in a mental hospital. Fitzgerald eventually collapsed for three things: loneliness, alcohol, and the awareness that he was wasting his talent. Between 1934 and 1937, he was on the brink of despair and disintegration. In 1940, at the age of 44, he died of frustration.
Fitzgerald uses the modified first-person narrator in The Great Gatsby. Nick is charge with relating the story as he sees it, he witnesses the whole story and his qualification as a sympathetic listener is carefully established on the first page of the novel. In The Great Gatsby, Nick has the same background with Fitzgerald. He represents one part of Fitzgerald’s personality: “the quiet, sober and reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East.” And, Nick’s description of himself in the novel holds true throughout the novel: he is tolerant and slow to judge, someone with whom people feel comfortable sharing their secrets. They are both thoughtful young men, who like literary in college and write a series of articles, and both have the experience to be in for the World War I. After the War, they find the wild and extravagant life seductive and exciting. Nick also functions as Fitzgerald’s voice. He feels disappointment to the lifestyle and the arrogance of the upper-class. He is also disgusted with the moral decay that he witnesses among the rich in New York, and finds the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath the glitter of the Jazz Age. It is also Fitzgerald’s idea longing for this absent moral center. And at last, from his length meditation, Nick finally muses that, in some ways, this story is a story of the West, even though it has taken place entirely on the East Coast. He remembers life in the Midwest, full of snow, trains, and Christmas wreaths. In contrast, he thinks that the East seems grotesque and distorted. So, all Nick can do is to move back to Minnesota, where American values are not decayed. In sum, it evidently shows that Nick represents one part of Fitzgerald’s personality: the quiet, sober and reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East.转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net