1. Introduction 1.1 Research background F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 #8211;1940) is widely recognized as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century and considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age. In his legendary life, he wrote about 160 short stories and 5 novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby (his best known), and Tender Is the Night. He was not only an active, leading participant in the typically frivolous, moneymaking life of the decade, but also a detached, profound observer, for his own life was a mirror of the times. He led a priceless life and achieved much during the ”Roaring Twenties”, drinking hard whisky, driving fast cars, and taking much delight in it. As one of the finest 20th -century American novels, The Great Gatsby (1925) tells about a tragic story of a rags-to-riches man, Jay Gatsby, who dedicates his whole life to reliving his American Dream, personified by his persistent pursuit of Daisy Buchanan. But under the corruptive circumstances, Gatsby#8217;s adolescent dream evaporates and his love for Daisy vanishes in the air. The novel displays a panorama of the 1920s#8217; America that has unprecedented economic prosperity on the one hand and astonishing spiritual emptiness on the other. The corruption and destruction of the characters, resulting from their reckless pursuit of material success and utter ignorance of spiritual improvement, reveal a sobering reminder to the world, which is also what this thesis intends to express. During the barely same period in China, a group of literati witnessed the 20th century teeming with breaks and creations and interwove their life and thoughts, perplexity and pursuit, fear and hope into various works of all genres in spite of the shadows of Anti-Japanese War. Among them, Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998) should deserve our attention, who is best known for his wit and erudition and whose works of non-fiction are characterized by the large amount of quotations in both Chinese and Western languages. Qian Zhongshu who lived through the age of upheavals of the 1940s in China wins his reputation for his devotion to the cause of literature. His rough fate makes him a great master and his works are regarded as academic treasures. During the Cultural Revolution, like many other prominent intellectuals of the time, Qian suffered persecution and was even appointed to be a janitor. Qian and his family survived the hardships of Cultural Revolution, but his son-in-law, a history teacher, was driven to suicide. In Qian#8217;s whole life, he kept silent most time when it came to political and social activities. Qian#8217;s most famous satirical novel Fortress Besieged (1947) is widely considered one of the masterpieces of 20th-century Chinese literature. As a humorous tale about the middle-class Chinese society in the late 1930s, the novel follows the misadventures of Fang Hung-chien, a bumbling everyman who wastes his time studying abroad, and secures a fake degree when learning he has run out of money and must return to China, thus starting a series of stories in Fortress Besiege. Qian Zhongshu#8217;s dissection of every soul in the novel, especially the hero Fang Hung-chien, draws all his readers back to the time when lots of young people struggled in different ”Fortress besieged”. It truly reflects the intellectual part of China#8217;s life and state of mind when the Japan#8217;s invasions expanded to some inland cities in the 1940s, like Shanghai where the story happens. In the extraordinary period with internal disorder and foreign invasions in China, Fang Hong-chien#8217;s tragedies in his life, marriage and career seems to be much more ridiculous and desperate. There appears no better way for him to get rid of his ”Fortress besieged”, just like everyone else in that era. This thesis is about to explore the connections between the heroes#8217; tragedies of the two stories. It has been widely accepted that Gatsby#8217;s and Fang Hung-chien#8217;s tragedies are the products of the times. Fang Hung-chien returned to China from Europe in 1937 when it was the early year of Anti-Japanese War. His life was still trapped in the old society: arranged marriage, male superiority, inevitable intrigue#8230; In the turbulent war age, the personal fate was sometimes doomed to share the same tragedy with its country. However, America in 1920s was recorded as the ”Roaring Twenties”, which refers to the era known for unprecedented economic prosperity, the evolution of jazz music, flapper culture, and bootlegging and other criminal activity from 1920 to 1929. Then, why Gatsby#8217;s life is a tragedy? ”It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire”, said by Fitzgerald （28）. Gatsby realized his pursuit of a rich life from scratch in that wonderful era and was regarded as a successful person in the upper class. He held luxurious parties, dressed in glamorous cloths and masks, and even didn#8217;t show a face in those parties. Nobody actually knew anything about him but his amazing wealth and connections. The female character, Daisy, seems to be the only failure of Gatsby#8217;s life, married to another man and then attracted by Gatsby#8217;s success. Gatsby gave up everything even life to chase Daisy and ended up, dead and alone. From the differences of their living time, it is obvious to find that internal and external factors can account for Fang Hung-chien#8217;s and Gatsby#8217;s tragedies, of which this thesis intends to conduct a comparison in aspects of analyzing similarities in their attitude towards the society, strong eagerness for social status, tough struggle in the contradictions between tradition and modernity, and institutionalization of their spiritual sustenance on others. 1.2 Need for the study As for the need for the study, both Fang Hung-chien and Gatsby are famous for their tragic life, which are the miniatures of everyone else in the world. The corruption and destruction of the characters, resulting from their reckless pursuit of material success and utter ignorance of spiritual improvement, issue a warning to the world. Firstly, under the impetuous social environment, it seems rather valuable to attribute Gatsby#8217;s and Fang#8217;s tragedies to the social cause that exerts its subtle influences on people#8217;s interpretation of information, understanding of reality and value judgment. Secondly, the analysis of the two heroes#8217; career development and love life can help ascertain the predicament of human beings in general, ways to minimize the contradictions between man#8217;s social development and the world of nature, materialistic abundance and spiritual pursuit, idealism and reality in particular. Lastly, the digging into personal causes of the heroes#8217; fates can reveal the strong power of personalities, which can not only nurture somebody but also destroy him. 2. Literature review 2.1Previous studies on The Great Gatsby Like Fitzgerald#8217;s other works, The Great Gatsby has aroused great attention and lots of comments from the American literary circles upon its publication. Although the novel was a little out of favor, the ”Fitzgerald revival movement” in the 1950s rekindled people#8217;s interest in it. The American society, even the whole world, made comments on its profound social significance, excellent narrative techniques, complicated metaphors and symbolism, and beautiful linguistic art. The very novel became a hot research topic and one of the classic of American literature in the 1960s, having a great influence on the American modern literature. Researches abroad have involved all sorts of perspectives, with Gatsby#8217;s tragedy and American Dream one of the research mainstream. Gatsby#8217;s ”American Dream” has been widely accepted as a mirror of the real America in the 20th century. Peter L. Hays (2008) generalizes the detailed factors for Gatsby#8217;s failure of the American Dream, pointing out that it is a tragic tale because modern American Dream can only be seen in people like Gatsby, which is a tragedy for the whole society. Parvin Ghasemi and Mitra Tiur (2009) claims that Gatsby is the embodiment of the fluid polarities of American experience: success and failure, illusion and disillusion, dream and nightmare. Lauren R. Maxwell (2010) studies the greatness of Gatsby#8217;s ”American Dream” from three aspects: Gatsby#8217;s struggle against fate focusing on his love and career, Gatsby#8217;s spirit of self-discipline and his spirit of self-sacrifice compared with Jesus Christ and other people. Laura Goldblatt (2015) employs Ernst Bloch's theory of disappointment and utopianism to dwell, in particular, upon the novel's representations of the American Dream as intimately related to failure and the promise of the New World. Bloch's (1996) insistence on disappointment embedded within utopian formations suggests that the novel's tragic take on Gatsby's dreams is the key to its mid-century fame and its continued cultural appeal. Until today, the diversified research perspectives and fruitful research achievements abroad have provided valuable references for Chinese scholars. For example, researches on the thematic studies vary according to different points. WuYuqing (2001) shows different understanding of the image of Daisy by combining the conversations among the writer, Gatsby, Tom and Nick with the description about Daisy in the novel. Zhang Qin (2003) finds that the female characters are dependent on the males to realize their own value, which reflects the female psychic structure and ethical norms in the ”Jazz age”. Chen Yuanyuan and Chen Dingbing (2009) points out that Gatsby#8217;s dream, strictly speaking, cannot be defined as the real American Dream, claiming that his dream was destined to be shattered for the lack of objective conditions compared with the traditional American Dreams. Cao Xia (2012), focusing on the spiritual wasteland, shows people#8217;s spiritual emptiness behind a rich material life. Some scholars start to work on the comparative studies of the novel in recent years, including the comparison between the other works of F. Scott Fitzgerald#8217;s and some Asian writers#8217;. Norwegian Forest, Murakami#8217;s representative novel, is the most popular choice among all the previous studies. Wang Jingjing (2013) interprets the different traditional values of the west and the east in Comparative study on Murakami and F. Scott Fitzgerald. 2.2 Previous studies on Fortress Besieged Since Fortress Besieged was translated into many languages, an increasing number of western scholars have studied it and made lots of achievements. Joanna Michlic (2004) focuses on Fang Hung-chien#8217;s thought transformation and mood undulation each time faced with the turning points in his life. Carles Prado-Fonts (2008) does much research on the ”Chinese face theory” in the novel and shows the potential influence of traditional culture on Fang#8217;s tragedy. Angela Jung Palandri#8217;s (2013) paper Chinese Topic Chains: An Analysis of the Topic Chains Used in Fortress Besieged shows the research status in the west and finds out the unique Chinese language art by analyzing Fang Hung-chien#8217;s features. Over the first half-century, the critical research topics on Fortress Besieged went through some interesting changes. In 1946 when the book was first published, the criticisms were directed at its isolation from the main stream of the time; in 1980s when it was republished, the criticism were transferred to its inappropriate language usage, such as improper analogies and too many quotations. However, there is no denying that as the only full-length novel of Qian Zhongshu#8217;s, Fortress Besieged has been scrutinized for decades since its republication. Especially from 1990s, the studies on Fortress Besieged have made much progress, with almost over 300 research papers in all kinds of books and magazines within 10 years. The paper Three Connotations of Fortress Besieged published in 1989 can be seen as an incisive summary of the previous studies on the book. Wen Rumin (1989) points that the research topics on Fortress Besieged could be divided into 3 levels: description of life, cultural meditation and philosophic thinking. Chen Ziqian (1994) proceeds from its tragedy aesthetic concept to figure out the theme of Fortress Besieged. From a sociological perspective, Qu Xuewei (1996) claims that the localized ”Fortress Besieged” in China meant the concept of face for Chinese intellectuals, the word for both self-esteem and vanity in Chinese, and many of them tended to choose to pursue the latter. As to the comparative studies on Fortress Besieged, Liu Xinhua (1993) frees himself from the limitation of the time to make a connection between Fortress Besieged and Humboldt#8217;s Gift and found the similarities in their themes. 2.3 Deficiency in previous studies It is not hard to find that the majority of research topics on The Great Gatsby and Fortress Besieged are about thematic studies and characters analysis. As to the comparison studies on The Great Gatsby with the eastern literature, they are mostly limited to Norwegian Forest, which has been widely considered ”the eastern Great Gatsby”; or some other romantic works in the 1920s. The studies about Fortress Besieged now focus on the translation strategies and techniques. As far as the author of the thesis can figure out, there is barely a topic on the comparison of Gatsby and Fang Hung-chien, which reveals the necessity of this research. This thesis places more emphasis on how internal and external factors influence a person#8217;s fate through the dynamic contrast of a western hero and an eastern hero based on the fruitful research results of the two novels. To explore the connections between The Great Gatsby and Fortress Besieged will contribute to helping the present studies jump out of the time and space limitations and providing more possibilities and directions for later researches. Works Cited Cao, Xia. [曹霞], ”On the Spiritual Wasteland in The Great Gatsby”. Journal of Yichun University No.3 (2012): 12-29. Chen, Yuanyuan, and Chen, Dingbing. ”Deterioration of the American Dream#8212;on the essence of Gatsby#8217;s dream in The Great Gatsby”. Journal of Inner Mongolia Agricultural University Vol.27 no.4, (2009): 85-87. Chen, Ziqian. [陈子谦]. ”Deep Implications of Fortress Besieged”. Journal of Guizhou University (1994): 47-50. Bloch, Ernst. Disappointment and Utopianism. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Penguin Classics, 1994: 28. Goldblatt, Laura. ”Can't Repeat the Past? Gatsby and the American Dream at Mid-Century”. Journal of American Studies (2015): 501-519. Hays, Peter L. ”What the Dickens? Great Expectations and The Great Gatsby”. The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review (2008): 31. Liu, Xinhua. [刘新华]. ”A Comparative Study of Fortress Besieged and Humboldt#8217;s Gift”. Beijing: Studies on Modern Chinese Literature (1993): 128-139. Maxwell, Lauren, R. ”The New Emperor's Clothes: Keatsian Echoes and American Materialism in The Great Gatsby”. Journal of American Studies (2010): 81. Marius, Bewley. ”Scott. Fitzgerald#8217;s Criticism of American”. Prentice-Hall (1963): 125. Michlic, Joanna. ””The Open Church#8217; and ”the Closed Church#8217; ”. Communist and Post-Communist Studies (2004): 74-80. Nathan, K. Mao, and Jeanne, Kelly. Fortress Besieged. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. Palandri, Angela Jung. ”Chinese Topic Chains: An Analysis of the Topic Chains Used in Fortress Besieged”. The Journal of Asian Studies (2013): 03-15. Qu, Xuewei. [瞿学伟]. ”Intellectuals in Fortress Besieged and Intellectuals#8217; Fortress Besieged”. Journal of Nanjing University (1996): 223-230. Tiur, Parvin, Ghasemi M. ”The Promise and Failure of the American Dream in Scott Fitzgerald#8217;s Fiction”. Advances in Literary Study (2009): 112-32. Wang, Jingjing. ”Comparative study on Murakami and F. Scott Fitzgerald”. Journal of Sichuan International Studies University (2013): 144-150. Wen, Rumin. [温儒敏]. ”Three Connotations of Fortress Besieged”. Beijing: Studies on Modern Chinese Literature (1989): 78-99. Wu, Yuqing. [吴羽卿], ”Reinterpretation on Daisy in The Great Gatsby”. Journal of Xi Zang Nation University 14.2, (2001): 20-25. Zhang, Qin. [张勤], ”Perspective of Female Identity from Three Women Characters in The Great Gatsby”. Journal of Zhejiang Normal University (Social Science version) 8.6 (2003):162-170.