论文总字数：38602字

摘 要

1. Introduction 1

1.1 About Fitzgerald 1

1.2 About The Great Gatsby 2

1.3 Research background 3

2. Literature Review 4

3. Materialization of Love in The Great Gatsby 5

3.1 Materialization of love in The Great Gatsby 5

3.1.1 Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan 5

3.1.2 Tom Buchanan and Daisy Buchanan 6

3.1.3 Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson 7

3.2 Causes of the materialization of love 9

3.2.1 The shadow of the World War I 9

3.2.2 The disillusionment of the American dream 9

3.2.3 Distortion of values and emotional alienation 11

3.3 Impacts of materialization of love 13

4. Conclusion 16

References 17

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to those who have offered me help and instructions when I was writing this thesis.

Firstly, I want to give my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Mrs. Wang. She gives me guidance throughout the writing process. Her profound knowledge, rigorous scholarship and easy-going personality has far-reaching impact on me. Mrs. Wang gave me precious instructions in my studies as well as positive influence on my life.

Next, my gratitude should be given to the professors in the School of Foreign Languages and Literature in Nanjing Tech University. They have shared with us their professional knowledge, broaden horizon and profound thinking, which contributes to a strong academic atmosphere where we can acquire a lot of knowledge.

Then, I would like to extend my appreciation to my classmates and friends who have encouraged me when I was confronted with barriers in the thesis writing. I enjoy communicating with them and without their company, I couldn’t have successfully overcome the difficulties in life.

Last but not least, I would love to express my profound love to my family who give me unwavering care and strong support in my life. Their support and love contributed a lot to the successful completion of my paper.

Abstract

1. Scott Fitzgerald is known as the most representative writer in the 20^th century of America. His masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, establishes him a worldwide reputation in literature. Set in Jazz Age, the novel depicts an era featuring disillusionment with the American dream and moral rebellion. People’s reliance on money as a code for expressing emotions results in the materialization of love. There are three reasons: the shadow of the World War I, the disillusionment of the American dream, distortions of values and emotional alienation. Through the analysis of leisure class and their conspicuous consumption, the novel strongly criticizes the corruption of the American dream in this period and the materialization of love. In the novel, people’s love and marriage are founded on a material basis and their feelings are measured by money, which results in their tragedy. Although material is important, a money-based relationship is not reliable. We should set up right values and view the relationship between money and love rationally.

Keywords: Fitzgerald; The Great Gatsby; Materialization of love

中文摘要

菲茨杰拉德是美国二十世纪最具有代表性的作家。他的代表作《了不起的盖茨比》奠定了他在世界文学上的声望。小说以爵士时代为背景，这段时期的特征是美国梦的幻灭和人们的道德反叛。人们用金钱来表达情感，导致了爱情的物化。它产生的原因有三个：一战的阴影；美国梦的幻灭；价值观的扭曲和情感上的疏离。通过对有闲阶级以及他们的炫耀性消费的分析，小说强烈地批判了这一时期美国梦的腐败以及爱情的物化。小说中，人们的爱情和婚姻建立在物质的基础上，并且用金钱来衡量感情，最终导致了他们的悲剧。尽管物质很重要，但是一段基于金钱的关系是不可靠的。我们应该树立正确的价值观，理性地看待金钱与爱情的关系。

关键词：菲茨杰拉德；《了不起的盖茨比》；爱情的物化

Introduction

1.1 About Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) is a well-known writer of the 20^th centuries in America and he has been praised as the romantic chronicler of the 1920s. He was not born rich, and nearly lost his love because of it. While he was in the army, he met Zelda Sayre at Montgomery and they got engaged. However, when he returned to New York after the war, he was unable to sell his stories, which made it hard for him to make a living. Then, in May 1919 Zelda broke off the engagement because he had no money, and it was only after the publication of This Side of Paradise in March 1920 had brought him fame and prosperity that they got married. The episode had an important influence on Fitzgerald, shaping his profound preoccupations with money and love. In 1925, his novel about a flamboyant racketeer’s attempt to recapture the upper-class beautiful girl who threw him over seemed to be an unlikely candidate for masterpiece or world-classic reputation. In effect, it was a commercial disappointment when it was published since the novel had recorded only modest sales. In the 1930s his wife became schizophrenic and he was suffered from diabetes. Deeply in debt, Fitzgerald managed to pay for his wife’s confinement and his daughter’s education by writing for films. He sacrificed all his life for artistic success but all the glamour disappeared when he struggled against alcohol and illness. When Fitzgerald died in 1940, all of his books were out of print. It seemed likely that this magnificent novel would disappear from the American scene and that its author would be completely forgotten. However, in the 1950s a full-scale Fitzgerald revival began, which also triggered a revival concentrating on The Great Gatsby. Critical reassessment of this novel and the general wave of nostalgia for the Jazz Age that swept the United States helped establish a popular awareness of Fitzgerald and reinforced people’s warm compassion for him. “Fitzgerald has mastered his talent and gone soaring in a beautiful flight, leaving farther behind all the men of his own generation” (Seldes, 1925: 162). He is termed as a dizzy philosopher -- “king at the apex of society, the last who projected his subjective life in fiction as a kind of tragic legend for his age and for future time” (Millar, 1981: 123).

1.2 About The Great Gatsby

Placed among the rare unarguable masterpieces of twentieth century, The Great Gatsby enjoys a worldwide reputation that few scholars or readers can deny. To American novelists, the persistence of this novel can be regarded as both a benchmark of quality and a popular literary landmark. As the overall awareness and appreciation of Fitzgerald’s fiction swelled in the subsequent years after its publication, one could find expressions of people’s appreciation for this novel in the countless “Scott Fitzgerald-look” clothing advertisements, or in the bars and nightclubs with names like “Zelda’s” or “Gatsby’s place”. Fitzgerald conveyed his acute awareness of the meaning of Jazz Age through the exhibition of social custom, clothing and music of his time. The romantic image of Jay Gatsby as well as the novel he lives in has been firmly fixed in American culture, in academic evaluation of literary achievement, and in the literature of other writers.

The scope of the novel’s profound effect can be gauged through the number and kinds of literary collections, anthologies, and studies of American fiction that have included excerpts from the novel as examples of good fiction. The rapid growth of readership of The Great Gatsby was accompanied by an equivalent explosion of critical and scholarly commentary and analysis. For the past two decades, The Modern Language Association International Bibliography has consistently shown the fact that Fitzgerald’s work is examined, critiqued and analyzed most frequently among that of American authors. Surely only part of that critical attention has been of lasting importance but it really helps focus attention upon the qualities that have made the novel worthy of acclaim as an artistic masterpiece. Besides, it provides answers to the question of why this short novel, which seemed to be dead before its author, rose from the graveyard of dated fiction and found its rightful position among the American masterpieces. The literary criticism of this book not only stimulates its cultural permanence but also helps to account for its artistic charm. The novel’s greatest strength lies in its moral questioning of America’s involvement with money. It is really a world classic and a permanent presence in American culture.

1.3 Research background

The backdrop of the novel is the period of American history called the “Roaring Twenties”, a time featuring disillusionment with the American dream and moral rebellion. Prohibition, which was enacted in 1920, forbade the manufacture, storage and sale of alcoholic in the United States, meeting with a lot of resistance. The law endowed drinking with a meaning of moral confrontation, which instead stimulated people’s addiction to alcohol. The popularity of consumerist culture and modern lifestyle made drinking become a display serving as a counter-force against the traditional moral system, self-restraint and simple living. Quickly seizing the opportunity, speculators ventured into bootlegging and made a killing in a short time.

The emergence of the leisure class in early twentieth-century America led to the propagation of luxury, idleness, pecuniary emulation and conspicuous consumption as glorious pursuits, in contradiction to the Protestant ethic of work, thrift and abstinence. The economic boom of the 1920s financed a more extravagant leisure-class lifestyle which was both glamorous and corrupt, and brought it by means of the mass media into social prominence. A tension was set up by the dual response of admiration for and envy of the glamorous life of the rich on the one hand, and moral condemnation of that life according to traditional values on the other. Fitzgerald recognized that the inheritance of wealth, the regarding of it as a natural-born right rather than as a just reward for victory in the business struggle, conditioned a new aristocratic spirit in America: to be born rich was what counted.

Literature Review

1. S. Eliot once spoke highly of The Great Gatsby in a letter to Fitzgerald, “It seems to be the first step that American Fiction has taken since Henry James” (Meyers, 1994:131). Regarded as a masterpiece depicting the social life in the Jazz Age, the novel provides good material for scholars as well as an important reference for the related research. “Perhaps the novel’s insistence that innocence is recapturable, that the Edenic past can be remade, appealed to a time hungry for beauty, ideals, and a sense of connectedness with fundamental American traditions” (Bruccoli, 1974: 30). As World War I destroyed people’s life and shattered their faith, the disillusionment with the American system and the efficacy of individual effort became the distinguishing feature of postwar American writing. During that period, Americans who came out of the crisis no longer felt that god was omnipotent and supreme. Their faith began to collapse, and material comforts, money, alcohol, parties and the pleasures of sex were the medicine to fill their emptiness and confusion (Saunders, 2018). J. D. Salinger expresses his admiration for The Great Gatsby by using the similar theme of revolt against the corruption of American innocence and a protagonist whose dreams were shattered by reality in his The Catcher in the Rye.

The novel is praised as essentially romantic with hints of a certain tragic suffering buried beneath the glamour of the romance (Saunders, 2018). It reveals the materialization of love in Jazz Age. Affected by this, people found their romantic relationship on a material basis and thus money plays an important role in their mate choices. Philip McGowan points out that “Gatsby underlines his financial metamorphosis by exploiting the trans-formative power of money, creating spectacles and entertainments, a lifestyle of illusion” (2004: 147). By showing off the splendid things his money has bought, Gatsby wants to provide evidence of his astounding wealth and thus lures Daisy into an extramarital affair. From the way he pursues his love, we can find that materialization of love is a remarkable feature in the novel.

Materialization of Love in The Great Gatsby

3.1 Materialization of love in The Great Gatsby

3.1.1 Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan

The first phase of Gatsby’s romance with Daisy Fay, in the summer of 1917, clearly indicates how and why this particular woman comes to exercise such a powerful hold on him. Emerging from a distinctively lower class milieu, a penniless young man without a past, the twenty-five-year-old Gatsby is enchanted by the physical beauty, social poise, high status, and material prosperity of eighteen-year-old Daisy. In his mind, Daisy is the first nice girl he has ever known. Given his unprepossessing upbringing, Daisy’s prosperous life seems almost magical: her beautiful house exudes ripe mystery, promising gay and radiant activities. She embodies the idea of perfection for Gatsby, representing the youth and mystery only wealth can preserve. But she fails to sustain her commitments during Gatsby’s absence and marries another man before his return from Europe. Gatsby’s courtship of her might be supposed to be finished. Instead of moving on to new romantic options, however, Gatsby continues to pursue the woman who has thrown him over. His long, secret campaign to repossess the woman he has lost constitutes the heart of the novel. To meet Daisy’s upper-class expectations and to compete effectively with her enormously rich husband, Tom Buchanan, Gatsby rightly judges that he needs to amass extraordinary wealth. During the three post-military years of separation, his energies are directed toward this goal. Through the exhibition of his European-style mansion and luxurious possessions, Gatsby wants to provide evidence of his long-term fidelity as well as his astounding wealth. Nick describes Gatsby’s feelings for Daisy as commercial: “I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it draw from her well-loved eyes” (Fitzgerald, 1925: 93). Daisy responds positively to his display and even cries over those beautiful shirts. Although their sentiments can be genuine, they are expressed in terms of money.

Before moving to New York, Gatsby declares that Daisy’s voice is full of money, which means that it embodies the essence of great wealth, economic prosperity, and social privilege. Through his remark, Fitzgerald materialized Daisy’s socioeconomic status and upper-class breeding, marking her as intrinsically wealthy, a golden girl. Nick makes romantic response to the sensuous appeal of Daisy’s voice, describing it as a singing compulsion, a promise that she has done gay, exciting things just a while since. He speculates that Gatsby’s spellbound fascination with Daisy is inspired chiefly by the feverish warmth of her voice. Presentation of Daisy as a siren-figure emphasizes her inexhaustible charm. However, Gatsby shows a startling insight by cutting through all the romantic mystique to ground her appeal firmly on money, placing her in direct relation with the economic substructure that provides the material basis for her luxurious lifestyle. For Gatsby, sexual attraction and social ambition have been perfectly fused in a young woman of the upper class. He realizes that wealth and sexual possession are closely associated in a class-bound society and that the consummation can take place only when he has proved himself her social equal. Therefore, all his parties and displays of wealth are the means of the consummation of his early romance with Daisy.

3.1.2 Tom Buchanan and Daisy Buchanan

Tom and Daisy come from comparable backgrounds in terms of status and wealth and their families are both at the top of the social hierarchy. Thus, there are many similarities in their values and interests and they have shared race, ethnicity and religion, which has greatly strengthened their marital bond. The common interests of the couple revolve around spending and displaying their great wealth: horses and stables, manorial estates, expensive automobiles, European journeys. Being rich is, in effect, their vocation. The shared assumption of special privilege and material resources is what has kept them together. Their mate choices vividly embody the materialized view of love. Motivated by the physiological and social pressure, when the immensely rich, socially dominant Tom Buchanan appears on the scene, Daisy chooses not to pass the chance. She is flattered by the attentions of this extraordinarily well-qualified man. Surely she is beautiful, elegant and glamorous, but Tom’s family is far richer than hers and his social position is accordingly more powerful. Tom’s courtship gratifies Daisy a lot because his mate value is so high, even beyond her expectations. Impressed by what Tom has offered, Daisy does not hesitate to make the decision of breaking her commitment to Gatsby since she wants to take the bird in hand. The problem of Gatsby’s falsified background clearly have prevented their marriage. The decision, though, does not strike the readers as admirable, it is self-protective and strategically sensible to herself. By accepting Tom instead of waiting for Gatsby, she locks in very real benefits, securing financially and socially superior resources for herself.

We can see that the Buchanan’s marriage is not based on love but on the equivalence of high mate value. Their marriage is materialized and loveless, having no future. Having learned of Tom’s affair with a hotel chambermaid almost before the honeymoon is over, Daisy comes to awareness of her husband’s persistent infidelity but she has no choice but to tolerate, however reluctantly. Money-based relationship cannot make people happy and it cause suffering instead.

3.1.3 Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson

The relationship between Tom and Myrtle is also materialized. At their first meeting on the train, Myrtle could not keep her eyes away from Tom’s fancy suit and patent leather shoes. A man like Tom Buchanan, who belongs to an extremely small pool of the super-rich, is distinctly attractive to most women, especially Myrtle. In addition, the social disparity between them makes it easy for Tom to please her since their affair demands only a small financial investment, which seems to be a cushy job for him. Likewise, Myrtle’s selection of Tom as an extramarital affair partner is strategically sound. Tom moves with assurance in privileged, upper class circles; while her husband, is the owner of a garage, a distinctly unprepossessing business. As his wife, Myrtle is forced to help out by pumping gas. Her stealthy days with Tom in New York City offer temporary elevation from dirt and poverty into wealth and leisure. Thus, she became Tom’s mistress without hesitation. A woman typically enjoys a boost in self-esteem when a man with better financial prospects than her current partner takes an interest in her. Myrtle is delighted with the magazines, face creams, perfumes, and clothing Tom purchases for her, pleased with the apartment he has rented for their use and decorates it with fancy ornaments and large furniture. Her humble origins, lack of experience and limited education makes her easy to please. And it also induces Myrtle to admire Tom’s status and wealth, rendering her naively vulnerable to his two-faced commitments. She makes impulse purchases -- buying a puppy, and then enters their small love-nest with a regal gesture, assuming an air of hauteur. She is convinced that her relationship with Tom has raised her social standing and thus her husband is socially beneath her. In her mind, Wilson is not really a gentleman and not even fit to lick her shoe. She denies everything about her marriage with Wilson because she harbors hopes that one day Tom may abandon his current wife and convert their affair into marriage.

The true nature of Tom’s attitude towards Myrtle is made plain in the violent quarrel that ends the party in the New York apartment. The quarrel is triggered by Myrtle’s jealous resentment of Tom’s wife. When Tom forbids her to mention Daisy’s name, striking her brutally after she fails to comply with his order, Myrtle surely knows that she is so distinctly inferior in Tom’s mind that for her to utter Daisy’s name would constitute contamination. Confronted with these insulting realities, Myrtle does not threaten to walk out since the benefits Tom provides are sufficiently valuable to keep her in the relationship. Instead of protesting that she will not continue the relationship with a man using violence against her, she makes despairing efforts to protect her cherished furnishings bought with Tom’s money from the blood streaming out of her broke nose. Clearly, Myrtle has no intention of leaving the benefits Tom provides and she will continue the affair whatever he does, showing off her fancy furniture and clothing, playing Lady of the Manor in a tiny apartment.

3.2 Causes of the materialization of love

3.2.1 The shadow of the World War I

In 1914, the World War I broke out in Europe and profoundly changed the world. It was an unprecedented catastrophe casting a long shadow over the postwar generations of America. After the war, people felt a strong sense of restlessness and alienation, dejectedly finding their society rootless, mobile and indifferent. They had been exhausted and their innocence was destroyed by the war, which resulted in the rebellion. The belief that their fighting had made the world safer and fairer became self-deceiving and outmoded. They began to doubt the traditional beliefs of patriotism, honor and heroism in the American culture. The booming of industry left no room for the code of traditional well-bred morality and gentility. After a short period of bitter resentment, people expressed their dissatisfaction by totally throwing away refined manners. In reality, such deliberately unconventional behavior rapidly became popular in the whole nation. Money had corrupted everything and all people directed their energy to being wealthy. When dreams didn’t come true, the possibilities money brought about became particularly appealing, which contributed to people’s reliance on money as a code for expressing emotion and self-identity. The collapse of faith and moral bankruptcy made young people in America a lost generation. In the novel, Nick has gone through World War I, an unforgettable experience for many men of his generation, and he still feels unsettled four years after it. Likewise, Gatsby’s war experience does not bring him any glory but wild rumors that he was a German spy and a murderer. The war destroys people’s simplicity and naivete, resulting their spiritual emptiness and disillusionment.

3.2.2 The disillusionment of the American dream

As a combination of the Protestant Ethics and constitutionalism, the American dream, which originally represents vitality and anticipation, has been termed as the national spirit all the time. The core meaning of it is that anyone in the United States, no matter rich or poor, can achieve a better life as long as he keeps working hard. With the development of capitalist economy, however, the American dream has been corrupted by wealth and people devote themselves to the pursuit of financial success.

Gatsby is apparently a victim of the corruption of American dream. Although born in a poor family, he was quite ambitious for financial success from a young age. In order to realize his aspiration, Gatsby established a series of strict daily schedule, making Franklin-like resolutions for self-improvement. Nevertheless, in such a consumption-oriented society, bootlegging and speculating, rather than industry and thrift, became the most effective ways to be rich. The traditional Protestant path to financial prosperity was unpromising. Hence, at the age of seventeen, Gatsby abandoned traditional beliefs, setting forth for profitable adventures. He was confident about his future glory since he thought himself as the son of God. A few yeas later, with his Long Island mansion, lavish parties and dubious wealth, Gatsby partakes of both the glamour and corruption of the leisure class in the 1920s. While the Protestant code dismisses him as a criminal and a waster and conservative taste also dismisses him as a flashy and vulgar upstart. By upper-class standards, Gatsby’s display of wealth is garish. His home, an imitation of a European hotel, is pretentious; his pink suit is flashy; his parties are spectacles of many-keyed commotion. In the novel, Tom Buchanan, the representative of Old Money, drives an expensive but conservative vehicle, while the newly rich Gatsby takes pride in his ostentatiously designed nickel-and-cream car, swollen with “triumphant hatboxes and super-boxes and tool-boxes” (Fitzgerald, 1925: 64). Its rococo embellishments and monstrous size clearly indicate that it is the property of a man untutored in upper-class understatement. Thus Tom contemptuously describes it as a circus wagon. People with humble origins can achieve wealth with efforts but wealth alone cannot guarantee entree into elite social circles. The social barrier is difficult to overcome and they will encounter inevitable resistance from people with inherited wealth. Gatsby wants to recapture Daisy through the power of money but he does not realize that his social origins present an insurmountable obstacle to the fulfillment of his dreams. He gazes at the green light across the bay where Daisy lives every night but it is just like the Holy Grail, which is always beyond his reach. His fantasy about the future glory and his vision of permanent togetherness with Daisy eventually vanish with a gunshot.

Tom Buchanan, who is regarded as the representative of the American dream, is arrogant and brutal. Daisy is romantically attractive to Gatsby all the time, yet at the beginning of the novel, when she confides to Nick that she has had a very bad time being married to Tom and has grown pretty cynical, Nick is struck by the basic insincerity of her complaints and her affectedly sophisticated disillusionment with marriage. Jordan Baker, who is admired by Nick, always assumes an air of superciliousness. Actually, she is cold and untruthful. To most people, they are glamorous and represent the American dream. However, they all have moral defects: they cause destructive damage and retreat back into their money or their vast carelessness. In this respect, Fitzgerald criticizes the selfishness, coldness and hypocrisy of the upper class and thus makes a further denial to the American dream.

3.2.3 Distortion of values and emotional alienation

In 1920s, with the rapid economic development, the United States rise to become the richest country in the world as well as the birthplace of consumerism. Caused by the prevalence of commodity fetishism, the consumerism is featured by the pursuit of the symbolic meaning of goods. Thus, people are fond of showing their social superiority through conspicuous consumption. Influenced by consumerism, people’s values are distorted and the traditional moral system is challenged. They gradually become slaves of money. In such an era, the rich can buy marriage or mistress while the poor have to struggle with the insult and discrimination from others.

In the novel, Tom Buchanan is wealthy and insolent. In his mind, money can buy everything. His wedding with Daisy was so spectacular and luxurious that it created a public sensation. In addition, he gave Daisy a string of pearls worth about 350,000 dollars before the wedding. Such conspicuous consumption undoubtedly exhibits the signs of Tom’s astounding wealth and social status. At the same time, it completely breaks down Daisy’s psychological defenses, encouraging her to abandon Gatsby and to yield to Tom’s money offensive. Likewise, Tom conquer his lowly mistress, Myrtle, with money. He effortlessly pleases her by purchasing fancy clothes and renting a hotel apartment for their use. These also belong to conspicuous consumption because to some extent a mistress is also an ornament for the upper class to show off their possession. For Gatsby, while, the display of wealth is a courtship tactic to attract Daisy’s attention. He plans their reunion very carefully, ensuring that Daisy can see his enormous dwelling and thus grasp the extent of his wealth. At their first meeting, Gatsby shows her around his home and displays his exquisite possessions in detail. The soft rich heap of Gatsby’s beautiful shirts moves Daisy to stormy tears. Her oddly emotional response to his display of conspicuous consumption betrays her recognition that Gatsby has overcome the social barriers that separated them and is now directly asking for her favour. Distortion of values leads to the prevalence of money worship, making materials the leading factor in people’s relationship.

The estrangement of emotional relationships make people feel disconnected and alienated, resulting in spiritual emptiness and indifference. George Wilson, a garage man who is spiritless and numb, is typical of those living in the ash heap abandoned by the industrial civilization. His wife, Myrtle, regrets marrying him and totally denies their relationship merely because of his poverty. On one hand, as Myrtle’s husband, Wilson knows nothing about her infidelity nor her inner world, and tries in vain to retrieve their relationship. Finally, he even kills the wrong man in revenge, resulting in tragedy. On the other hand, having used his wealth to attract Myrtle to be his mistress, Tom also deceives Wilson financially and keeps him vacillating uncomfortably between anticipation and disappointment, overriding his feeble protests with bullying displays of social dominance. Tom expresses his contempt by saying: “he’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive” (Fitzgerald, 1925: 26).

For Gatsby, Daisy is the embodiment of the American dream. He harbors fantasy about recapturing her with money but actually he does not really know her. His naivete contrasts sharply with Daisy’s mannered sophistication, which renders their relationship rather vulnerable. What’s more, Gatsby is distant from his family and he conceals his lower-class origins, recreating himself in the image of his mentor and surrogate father, Dan Cody, the metal tycoon. According to Nick, Gatsby has never really accepted his parents as his own, so he replaces the shiftless and unsuccessful farm people with Cody. His parents know nothing about his ambitions and has been absent from his life until his death. And none of his friends attends his funeral.

Nick has always regarded himself as a person who is able to reserve judgement about others but afterwards he is nearly destroyed by the events he relates. Lonely and directionless, he is alienated from the world around him. On the open page of the novel, Nick acknowledges that he has always been uncomfortable with too much intimacy. He goes to the East with a half-hearted intention of going into the bond business. However, he becomes increasingly unsettled as events bring him face to face with harsher realities of life. Within a day, Daisy has killed Myrtle Wilson in a hit-and-run accident; George Wilson, led by Tom to believe that Gatsby had been driving the death car, has murdered Gatsby and then killed himself. Nick begins to think of his future as threatening and dangerous. He has become estranged from his friends. After the accident, he feels remote from others and wanting to be alone. He refuses Jordan’s invitation to come into the Buchanan’s house when she reacts with self-absorbed callousness to these events. Tom and Daisy’s carelessness and their refusal to assume responsibility for their actions make Nick feels that the East is haunted for him, distorted even beyond his eye’s power of correction. With disillusionment, he leaves the East and wishes the world could be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever. Emotional alienation makes people harbor no enthusiasm or anticipation for a genuine relationship, becoming an crucial factor in the materialization of love.

3.3 Impacts of materialization of love

Gatsby’s love of Daisy is materialized and is always related to money. His idealism is entirely misdirected. He worships a sort of life that comes with great wealth. His vision is a crude, corrupted form of the American dream. His love of Daisy is partly based on the glamour he associates with her money and he pursues her by becoming wealthy himself. Gatsby’s failure becomes tragic as he is destroyed by what he has loved so wholeheartedly. His spectacular reappearance initially brings Daisy excitement and surprise, jolting her out of the everyday boredom. While, Daisy evidently has accepted his courtship as a titillating fantasy rather than serious emotional commitment. She is satisfied with the short-term benefits their romance supplies and she obtains a terrific boost to her self-esteem. She may view Gatsby’s five-year devotion as gratifying payback for Tom’s persistent infidelity, but clearly she is not prepared to abandon the security of her marriage. Given this, it is not surprising that Daisy crumbles quickly during the showdown between Gatsby and Tom: she refuses to commit herself to the new man in life. Confronted with the threat Gatsby has posed, Tom’s response is rather calculated as he deliberately reminds Daisy how risky life with “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere” would be. Tom exposes Gatsby’s lack of social status and upper-class connections, making Daisy realize that her lover is not her kind. He offers information about Gatsby’s fly-by-night businesses, untrustworthy associates, and illegal enterprises. Besides, he belittles Gatsby’s dedication by dismissing his five-year devotion to Daisy as a presumptuous little flirtation. He sneeringly concludes that Daisy’s lover is a bootlegger and a common swindler, belonging to the class who deliver groceries to the back door. Daisy is staring terrified after Tom has made these disparaging accusations. Immediately she realizes that the marriage to Gatsby would take her out of the privileged socioeconomic milieu in which she has always lived. Nick’s interpretation of Daisy’s behavior during the confrontation between her husband and her lover is that “she realized at last what she was doing-- and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all” (Fitzgerald, 1925: 135).

Nick’s final pronouncement on Tom and Daisy, is that they are careless people whose wealth has allowed them to cultivate a profound obliviousness to other people’s sufferings: “They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness” (Fitzgerald, 1925: 185). At the beginning, Gatsby can recognize the vast difference between Daisy and himself but afterwards he foolishly believes that the money he has earned can erase that social gap. The assumptions he relies upon to achieve his goal are misguided, rendering his commitment to this illusion quite poignant and tragic. The materialization of love makes people subordinate love to money. Contrasting with the possibilities money provides, unobtainable love is painful and desperate. Thus people turn to money for comfort, which takes them farther from their dream.

4. Conclusion

Considered to be a profound revelation of the American dream in the 1920s, the novel shows a paradoxical life of people, which can be simultaneously admirable and corrupt. Fitzgerald’s upbringing and early experience make him acutely aware of the negative impacts of materialism and he reveals the emotional alienation and distortion of human nature in Jazz Age.

Although materials play a important role when people choose a partner, the money-based relationship is not reliable. People value money for sound reasons, but money alone cannot guarantee true love. Fitzgerald has always been aware of his culture’s preoccupation with easy financial success. He clearly shows us that, when idealized visions are shattered, the single-minded pursuit of wealth can lead to disasters. People suffer from their sense of alienation and spiritual emptiness, turning to indulgence in sensual riotousness and conspicuous consumption. Fitzgerald advocates traditional ethics of innocence and simplicity. Given the material abundance of the modern society, we should set up right values and view the relationship between money and love rationally.

References

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Decker, J. L. (1994). Gatsby’s pristine dream: The diminishment of the self-made man in the tribal twenties. Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 28(1), 52–71.

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