Book Review: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Great Gatsby", the top work of American writer Fitzgerald, has long been a world classic and has been respected by a group of famous writers such as Haruki Murakami.
The reason why it has become a classic is that there must be a cautionary truth that transcends time and space. He warns us not to indulge in the illusions brought about by the world of flowers so that every reader can become a "great Gatsby".
When reading this book for the first time, we may not be able to discover the greatness of Gatsby, but this is precisely the core of this book - to maintain the spiritual pure land of the prosperous city by discovering the "greatness".
When the First World War had just ended, the United States, as the victor of the First World War, successfully surpassed the old capitalist countries to become the first capitalist power.
So far, the international status of the United States has improved unprecedentedly, and at the same time, there has been a prosperous situation with economic development. As social life tends to be peaceful and stable, the American people believe that the center of life should turn to freedom and enjoyment.
In particular, young people are indulging in infatuation with money and money, and some people even abandon their ideological and moral consciousness in pursuit of money and even love.
Therefore, the economic prosperity of the United States is accompanied by the decline of the world on the ideological and moral levels. The book The Great Gatsby is based on this background.
The American Dream of Gatsby
Gatsby is a young man who has a great yearning for the American Dream. In the beginning, the connotation of the American Dream was that if people want to get the life they want, they need to achieve it through the efforts of their own hands. In other words, as long as we work hard towards our goals, we can definitely achieve our dreams.
However, after the First World War brought unprecedented prosperity to the American economy, the connotation of the American dream has undergone a certain change, and the motivation for people to pursue their dreams lies in obtaining money.
In order to pursue the girl he likes, Gatsby chooses to take risks and sell bootleg wine to accumulate wealth. After gaining a certain amount of wealth, he spends a lot of time, holding banquets and inviting guests to attract the attention of the girl he likes. And Gatsby's guests are often in a relationship of exchange of interests with him, rather than friends in the true sense.
They don't really wish each other a better life. Instead, driven by the mentality of comparison, they always hope that they are better than others. From this aspect, it can be seen that the seemingly prosperous economy of the United States on the surface is actually prevalent in the wind of comparison and luxury.
People from all strata of society have the same characteristics, that is, they will do anything to pursue real money, and spend money wantonly for pleasure, and even the poor want to borrow money in pursuit of money pleasure. Behind this false prosperity, it foreshadows that the subsequent capitalist economic crisis will lead to World War II, and the American dream will be shattered.
The Fall of Daisy's Human Nature
The heroine Daisy in the story is actually a typical representative of the degeneration of human nature. In the name of love, she actually pursues money. As a courtesan, soldiers come to Daisy's house every night for a banquet.
In the beginning, Daisy chose Gatsby because Gatsby tricked Daisy into being rich. When she found out about Gatsby's poor status, she turned to the rich and powerful Tom as her husband. Being a wife didn't change Daisy's mind, she was still after money, so when Gatsby came back rich, she turned to Gatsby.
A class of women represented by Daisy takes love as the slogan, regards men as their wallets, pursues a life of luxury and enjoyment, and takes the pursuit of money as their only life goal and pleasure. This is essentially a degeneration of human nature and a lack of spirit.
A dream of a material world, a dream of a vacuum of value, the world in which it exists and the world it presents, and a warning for those who come after us today, especially today's youth. This enlightens us to find our true meaning of life in our life and work hard towards worthy goals, instead of comforting our inner emptiness with a "noble" ideology.
Book: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
About the Author: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself.
He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s.
He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby—his most famous—and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously.
Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.
Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" Quotes
- All the glamorous beauty is no match for time, and it will never return.
- The world doesn't care about your self-esteem, people only see your achievements. Don't overemphasize your self-esteem until you have achieved nothing.
- All beings in the world are either pursued by others, pursued by others, or busy or overworked.
- All great novels will eventually point in one direction, nothingness. All life has a common result, broken dreams, and death.
- Don't complain when you get into a man-made predicament, you can only learn lessons silently.
- In the long dark night of the soul, every day is three o'clock in the morning.
- Whenever you feel like criticizing someone, you must remember that not all people in this world have the conditions you have.
- Society is full of injustice. You don't want to change it first, you can only adapt to it first. (because you can't control it).
- People are not born equal, and people's feelings of good and evil are also different.
- You cannot repeat what happened in the past.
- The loneliest moment in everyone's life is when they watch the whole world crumble, and all they can do is stare blankly.
- A real skill will make life much more successful.
- I am both in and out of it, and I am both intoxicated and disgusted by the ever-changing nature of life.
- There is no confusion in the world that can compare to the confusion of a simple-minded person's mind.
- Hope is leaving us, but it doesn't matter. Tomorrow we will run faster and stretch our arms farther. One day, we will continue to sail hard. Going against the current, I was pushed back and forth until I returned to the past.
Book Summary: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In the history of American literature, if we want to say a well-deserved classic, we have to mention the book "The Great Gatsby".
This book is regarded as the national reading of the United States and has been selected as the must-reading list for American teenagers. "The Great Gatsby" ranks second in the list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century in the United States.
The New York Times rated it as a peculiar book, a mysterious and flashy story. Writer Haruki Murakami gave this book a lot of praise:
"If I were asked to choose only one book I must read in my life, I would choose The Great Gatsby without hesitation. I flipped through a page and read the previous paragraph. It never disappointed me once, and not a single page made anyone No interested. What an incredible masterpiece!"
This shows the status of this book in the history of literature. So what is the story of this critically acclaimed book?
The book "The Great Gatsby" is not long, and the translation is only 100,000 words. But it is such a thin book, but it accurately and ruthlessly portrays the glitz and confusion of the characters of that era.
It mainly tells the story of Gatsby, an officer from a low-level background, who broke up with his first love, Daisy, when he was young, because of the opposition of Daisy's family.
So in order to regain Daisy, he devoted his whole life to this obsession, doing everything he could, and even became a wealthy person in the upper class through illegal means of making money, trying to get close to Daisy, just to relive the old dream with her.
At the end of the story, he is even willing to take the blame for Daisy's murderer. I thought that Gatsby's affectionate efforts would lead to a fairy tale ending for the two of them.
However, flashy and fragile bubbles cannot stand the test of reality. Gatsby didn't exchange for Daisy's tenderness until the moment before his death.
Gatsby's tragedy was doomed at the beginning of the story. The author also denies the American flashy dream of that era through Gatsby's personal experience and fate.
The author of this book is the American writer Fitzgerald, who is the Bole of Hemingway, the author of The Old Man and the Sea, and the king of short stories as famous as O Henry.
He is the spokesman of the American "Jazz Age" and an important writer of the "Lost Generation". Hemingway commented on Fitzgerald: His talent is like the colorful patterns on the wings of a butterfly, it is innate.
I believe this story from the 1920s can still arouse our resonance and thinking when we read it today. We also see our own shadow in the illusory outline of the foam. Or that we are nothing more than one of many "21st century Gatsby", often immersed in what we call an ideal life. Those ideals are gorgeous, but they are out of touch with reality.
Daisy, the old love Gatsby pursues in the book, is not just a simple character, but a symbol of all kinds of ethereal, flashy, vulgar, fake exquisite, or koi-like in our real life. There are so many things that are contrary to reality.
In this article, I will analyze the three truths of the book from the following three points through the encounter and fate of the protagonist Gatsby's long-cherished wish.
- In the pursuit of the so-called "high-class sense of high society", but lost his most authentic self.
- The deep affection for carving a boat and begging for a sword can't touch anyone
- A strong heart should come from self-approval, not external admiration and flattery
1. Blindly pursue a sense of luxury in the upper class, but lose the most authentic self
Gatsby spent his whole life pursuing what he thought was a long-cherished wish, but at the same time, he lost the most precious thing, which is his true self.
There is such an intriguing story in the history of entrepreneurship in the United States. It is said that a young man was stopped by a question from his father.
Dad asked him, "Do you know what is the cheapest and what is the most expensive in this world?" I think most people are like this guy, shaking their heads and unable to answer.
Dad told him that if you want to buy roses on Valentine's Day, then roses are the cheapest because a rose is only a few dollars.
So what is the most expensive? Your obsession is the most precious. Because the girl you want to send flowers to is the most important person, and once you choose the wrong person, all your life and wealth will be in this relationship, so it is said that your obsession determines everything, and obsession is the most expensive, but your subconscious is often unaware of this truth.
This is the case with Gatsby in the book. He thinks that Daisy married someone else because he was poor, so as long as she gets rich, Daisy can come back into his arms again. Gatsby spent his whole life with this obsession and for this unsolvable knot. He even gathered wealth through illegal means such as alcohol trafficking. He wanted to be in the upper class, just to get close to Daisy.
Gatsby lived for this long-cherished wish all his life, paying for a scene he imagined. Beyond that, his world is blank.
But Gatsby ignored the truth, the Daisy of today is no longer the Daisy of the past. Daisy in those days liked to be passionate, to fight for the country, to be brave and true to Gatsby. Today's Daisy is completely indulged in the 360-degree paper drunk, the electro-optical illusion of the rich. Nowadays, in order to pursue the upper class, Gatsby is no longer a hot-blooded teenager, and he has also lost his truest self.
The two of them are no longer on the same channel. To describe it in mathematical terms, in two completely different times and spaces, two parallel lines cannot intersect, they will only drift apart!
No matter how powerful a person is, it is impossible to turn the clock of history back to the past. And Gatsby mistakenly thinks that a lot of money can make everything go back to the past. This is Gatsby's most innocent, but also the saddest.
Disregarding reality, Gatsby blindly indulges in his own made-up dreams in order to find the love lost due to poverty. But in the process of chasing his dream, he lost the most precious obsession and lost his truest self, which is the root of his tragic end.
2. The deep affection for carving a boat and begging for a sword can't touch anyone
Gatsby's deep affection for Daisy is tantamount to the love of the sword. No matter how deep the engraved mark is, it cannot stop the ship from moving forward.
At that time, Daisy abandoned herself and married someone else, leaving a mark on Gatsby's heart, which became a knot in Gatsby's heart that could not be solved. So Gatsby kept that day, that moment, that scene in his heart. He began to struggle, imagining that when he returned triumphantly, he would be able to relive his old dream with Daisy.
Gatsby's mentality is like the text he learned in elementary school - "Crawling a Boat and Looking for a Sword". Gatsby is like the person who engraved the mark, he has always stayed in that picture, and the mark has kidnapped him for a lifetime. He thought that when he became rich and found the mark of the year, he could rewrite the fate of himself and Daisy. However, the truth is that no matter how obvious the mark is, it cannot change the course of the ship. Daisy is just like that boat. Although there are marks on the hull, the area where Daisy stays now is no longer the sea area where the sword fell.
Gatsby's self-confessed affectionate romance only touched himself, but not Daisy. He was immersed in romantic memories and fantasies, but the romance belonged only to himself, not Daisy. That long-cherished wish was imagined by his own infatuation.
However, the cold reality and the ruthless Daisy wiped out Gatsby's last trace of romantic fantasies.
After Daisy was double-fed by Gatsby and her husband Tom, she was confused and killed her car. Gatsby resolutely decided to take the blame for Daisy. But I didn't expect Daisy's husband Tom to blame all this on Gatsby. In the end, Gatsby was shot as the real murderer.
The reason why Gatsby's last bit of romantic fantasies is also wiped out is that before Gatsby died, he was still waiting for Daisy's call. The better they eloped together. It's a pity that Gatsby didn't know at that time that Daisy, whom he was thinking of, was already packing at home and was about to escape from New York with her husband Tom.
Daisy has an instinctive ability to judge the situation. He doesn't need to be too brainy to do things, and he can always make the most appropriate choice. He had no guilt about Gatsby taking the blame for himself, and she left New York with peace of mind. Perhaps at the bottom of Daisy's heart, she always believed that she and Gatsby belonged to two different classes. Gatsby was from the lower class, and it was right for her to take the blame for herself.
Woohoo! Gatsby's long-cherished wish and his life came to an end forever at this moment. His funeral was very quiet, in stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of his home. Of course, this is not the point. Gatsby didn't care about the concerns of those alcoholic and meaty friends. The point is that Daisy, who Gatsby cares about most, has never even delivered a bouquet of flowers or a single greeting.
Gatsby thought that his soulful quest for a sword could not move anyone, nor could he rewrite anyone's fate.
3. A strong heart should come from self-approval, not external admiration, and flattery
The more high-profile Gatsby became, the more he showed his inferiority complex. People who are bluffing are generally people who are extremely inferior.
Even after Gatsby became rich, his inner inferiority complex was never eradicated, as can be seen from his psychological activities in many places in the book.
There is a description of Gatsby in Chapter 10 of this book:
He never spoke again, and the closer he got to the city, the more reserved he seemed.
In Chapter 13 of this book, Gatsby looks through the autumn waters and looks forward to meeting Daisy, but the night before meeting Daisy, he is nervous and has insomnia, and he is worried that this meeting will not save the situation. When Daisy actually appeared, he hesitated and avoided meeting.
It can be seen from these that Gatsby still feels inferior to others from the bottom of his heart. In front of Daisy and other nobles, he would never be able to show the same natural confidence as their nobles. On the contrary, he needs external decorations, such as a house, car, and money, to bless his self-confidence.
In addition, he changed his name, pretended to be an Oxford graduate, and fabricated the identities of various noble relatives. These seemingly mysterious and curious rumors all reflected his inferiority complex from the side. He needs to decorate himself deliberately so that he is not looked down upon by others and can maintain the confidence to talk to the upper class on an equal footing.
Gatsby's high-profile approach to Daisy reflects his low self-esteem and lack of confidence. So he bought the villa opposite Daisy's house just to make Daisy look up to him. In addition, the illegality of his source of money was also an important reason why he dared not face himself. A person with a truly strong heart does not need to deliberately show off decorations but only needs to behave normally.
From Gatsby's story, we realize that money or status can make people powerful for a while, but they cannot withstand the long-term test of reality. Even if others look up to me in a broken way, but I can't recognize myself in my heart, I still can't escape the torture of inferiority. Self-confidence and inner strength should come from a person's inner approval, not the admiration and flattery of the outside world.
Book Reviews by The Great Gatsby
Hemingway bluntly stated in "The Feast of the Flow" that F. Scott Fitzgerald was ruined by women. This is unfair. Women made him and women ruined him. A great man is always destroyed by what made him, without exception; and most people are obscure only because they have not encountered what made them.
Seineva begged him repeatedly: "Please, don't idealize me..." And the only thing he could do from the New Year's ball at the age of eighteen was to enshrine her on the highest unattainable altar.
Ten years later he had a great name for who he was: Jay Gatsby, and the streets he and she had walked through when he fell in love formed a ladder to a treetop The secret place - he can climb up, and if he climbs alone, he can suck the sap of life as soon as he goes up.
Then, on the highest unattainable altar, "her white face was close to his own, and his heart beat faster and faster. He knew that as soon as he kissed this girl, he would bring his indescribable longings to her for a short time. Her breaths of her are forever united, and his mind will never run as freely as the mind of God.
So he waits and listens a little longer for the tuning fork that has struck a star. Then he kisses her At the touch of his lips, she opened to him like a flower, and the incarnation of the ideal was complete."
Gatsby kissed Daisy, but Fitzgerald never kissed Geneva, because she didn't, she was flawless. She's not just Daisy, she's Isabella, Roslyn, Gismin, Judy, Minnie, and Josephine.
The women who are supremely favored in the love stories are all Sanneva in his fantasy, and the title page of the story is always dedicated to another woman, his wife, "to Zelda", "to Zelda again" up”. In The Great Gatsby, Daisy said sadly to Gatsby, "I can't say by myself that I never loved Tom. That wouldn't be true."
Likewise, even if Fitzgerald Rad spoke to Seineva alone, he couldn't say he never loved Zelda. On the contrary, he loved Zelda far more than Seineva, because he married her because watched her grow old because he hated her because they killed each other.
1. "I only record the moments that shine."
After he broke up with her, he asked each other to destroy all correspondence, which she did, but he didn't. At the age of forty-four, he died of a heart attack caused by excessive drinking, near bankruptcy, and his wife was in an insane asylum. His only daughter, who was 19 at the time, sorted out her belongings and found 227 typed pages in a folder marked "absolutely private", all letters from a man named Ginevra King.
His only daughter sent the letter to the original owner, a longtime wife and mother, and her husband, a Chicago department store tycoon. Shan Neva put the letters in the corner of the closet, which was full of luxurious evening dresses. Every night, she chose one from this closet and appeared at the dinner table dignifiedly and beautifully. the queen.
In this high-ranking wealthy family, only the most beautiful women in each generation are named Sineva, Sineva, the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de'Benci, the noble lady of Florence, graceful, pure, and wise. Her grandmother's name is Sinewa, her mother's name is Sinewa, her name is Sinewa, her daughter's name is Sinewa, and the most beautiful of her granddaughters is also called Sinewa.
Many years later, Seineva would ask her eponymous grandmother, "Grandma, what's locked in this box?" Her heavily dressed grandmother shook her head mysteriously. It was not until the day she died that people discovered the 227 pages of letters in the box.
There was a diary on top of the letters. The words written by the girl in the vertigo of passionate love were written on the title page of the diary: "I only record the shining Moment."
The little finger of Seinewa's right hand shone brightly, a rose gold ring with "Big Four 1914" engraved on it. In 1914, the 15-year-old Seinewa was the crown of Chicago's "Four Golden Flowers", the four most beautiful, richest, and most social girls. This is not a flower name chosen privately by the dandy children, but a self-proclaimed title of Seineva and her three friends who are close to each other.
They have a pretentious attitude to making rings especially and wear beautiful dresses for a group photo. Probably only the best and most beautiful woman can have such self-knowledge and self-confidence, and Seineva has both. Her father was a successful securities dealer and her maternal grandfather was a construction tycoon.
She was round and boneless, with small, delicate hands, long, thin legs, dark, curly hair, and dark brown eyes that were always shining. Her voice was low and hoarse, and she kept changing her tune as she spoke loudly, as if singing, "singing every word with a meaning that it never had before and never will ever have again."
On January 4, 1915, at a New Year's party in St. Paul, Minnesota, eighteen-year-old Fitzgerald met sixteen-year-old Seineva. The Seine was originally a visiting classmate who stayed in Sao Paulo for a while. Fitzgerald, who was a sophomore at Princeton at the time, went home for Christmas. He had heard the good name of Sine for a long time.
When someone asked him if he would go to the party on January 4, he said to his circle of friends, " If Geneva goes, I'll go." She went, he went, he saw her in a crowd of boys and girls, and he said a few words before and after. And these hurried conversations had captured him. He should have taken the train back to school the next day, but decided to postpone it for a day so that he could dance with Seineva at the next day's ball.
On the night of January 5th, they danced all night, at eleven o'clock he was going to catch the train, and she took him to the door, surrounded by acquaintances, they didn't kiss out of shyness, they held hands, he said he would write a letter, she said she would reply. In her diary that night she hurriedly wrote: "Scott was perfect...he left at 11 for Princeton--oh!"
Eighteen-year-old Scott Fitzgerald is perfect, as long as his studies and his father are not mentioned. When he was in high school, he was the last in the school. It took a lot of human connections to get into Princeton.
At the end of his freshman year, all subjects were poor. He was not stupid, but he was too lazy to be driven by others. His mother's family was very wealthy, but unfortunately, his grandfather died early, he had many children, and the huge family property was not much left when Fitzgerald was young.
His father's business failed and he supported his family by working as a grocery seller for his brother-in-law's company. Although he was well-fed, according to his father's status, he didn't have the chance to enter the social circle of upper-class children. He was just thinking of his grandfather's face, and he was often invited to play with him at every party.
And as long as school and father are not mentioned, Fitzgerald is perfect. He was extremely handsome, the contours of his face even more beautiful than a woman's, his lips were sensitive and soft, and his pale blond hair was parted and carefully brushed back. During years of his adolescence, he had developed a demeanor of his own, speaking with wit and sincerity.
Ten years later he would describe himself in "The Great Gatsby": "He had a knowing smile—and more than that. It was a rare smile, with an expression of lasting kindness that you'll never see in a lifetime. Two or three times. It faces—or seems to be facing—the whole world of eternity for a moment, and then focuses on you with an irresistible preference for you.”
This poetic description is naturally Exaggerated but appropriate. Years later Fitzgerald fell out with all their friends in the world, including his old friend Hemingway, and his editor Maxwell Perkins... but all these friends are still in the memoir He talked about his natural demeanor and heroic spirit, and on the night of January 5, 1915, Sineva also felt the kind of preference that was focused on her in the face of the whole world.
On January 5, Fitzgerald returned to Princeton, and the Seine returned to Westover, Connecticut. On January 7, his first letter was expressly delivered to Seineva, signed "Temporarily Devotedly Yrs.", and her first reply arrived on January 11. In his hand, it was signed "Yours Fickely sometimes but Devotely at present" (Yours Fickely sometimes but Devotely at present...)
In the two years since that day, they exchanged hundreds of letters. She has many admirers, and there are many female companions by his side. This is a game of love and wishes. Show off stacks of letters to friends to show how popular she is. But I don't know who's since then:
January 20: "Scott, a few years ago I was happy to be called a 'quick shooter'. Of course, it was crazy but I was too young then and I am now But sixteen...everyone says I'm the same, but I don't. I talk with a lot of heart, but no one believes...how alike we are, you know I'm much more than what other people talk about."
January 25: "I'm sentimental tonight. How I wish we were home now. Oh, how I wish, Scott, I just stayed in the mood thinking about that night in St. Paul Until tomorrow morning. Scott, don't think I'll forget you when you're not here, I've been thinking about you."
On February 20, Fitzgerald decided to go to see her at Seinevar's school. The strict girls' school only accepts visitors every Saturday from 4 to 6 pm. Fitzgerald got up early and took the train from Princeton to Connecticut via New York. After getting down in a nearby town, he took another trolley to reach the girls' school.
He was taken into a small room with four sides of glass, and Seinewa sat in it, wearing a school uniform and no make-up, with a surveillance escort beside him. For an hour and a half of the visit, they just held hands and talked, while Sinevar wrote contentedly in his diary, "Oh, it's so nice to see him again. I love him madly."
On June 8 Sinevar's mother Came to pick her up for the summer vacation and invited Fitzgerald to dinner while passing through New York. Fitzgerald will never forget that dinner in the garden on the top floor of the Ritz Hotel and recalled in prose years later that "the passing figure of Seineva illuminated the whole roof of the Ritz..."
Geneva once wrote in a letter: "I tell you, we meet for exactly fifteen hours in total!"
And she kept fantasizing, "If there is a perfect hour, on a certain day, in a certain place, only The two of us, that would be great."
Seineva wanted to use the perfect hour to listen to his sweeter and bolder words, and Fitzgerald wanted to use the perfect hour to make up for his kiss. But this hour never appeared.
They kept looking forward to seeing each other in a hurry in different places, but every time they were surrounded by too many surveillance eyes. Gradually, he realized that the Perfect Hour only exists in the fictional world, and he began to write short stories, the first one called "The Perfect Hour", which he sent to Seineva to make her happy.
A month later, Seineva replied with a story of her own, also called "Perfect Hour", about the heroine who married into a wealthy family but had an unhappy marriage and met her old lover a few years later. The heroine's name is Seineva King, and the old lover's name is Scott Fitzgerald.
Even in love, she is alert to know that he is not worthy of her. He probably knew it too, so he loved Seineva's story out of self-deprecation. He rewrote the story many times in his life, the last time in "The Great Gatsby" ten years later, the heroine's name was Daisy Fay and the old lover's name was Jay Gatsby.
In August 1916, when he went to Seineva's house for the last time, her father told him: "Poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls." This sentence ended the relationship, It also brought an indelible shame.
2. The Princess of the Barbarian
In addition to Seineva, there was something more worthy of Fitzgerald's worries that year. At the end of the fall semester of 1915, he was temporarily dropped due to poor grades. On Christmas Day 1915, Princeton's Triangle Club toured the United States, as usual, performing the comedy "Evil Eye", but Fitzgerald, the script and lyricist, was banned from performing with the group for academic reasons.
At two shows in Chicago, "three hundred young ladies occupied the front row of the theater. At the end of the show, they stood up and threw bouquets at the actors." Fitzgerald, who deserved the bouquet and compliments that night Sitting in a gloomy home, De was disappointed and angry and began to write another story about Juneva.
In the spring of 1917, the United States announced its participation in World War I, and tens of millions of young people signed up to join the army. Fitzgerald has been suspended for a year and is destined not to graduate from Princeton. He joined the army following the crowd, and joining the army gave him an honorable excuse to formally drop out of Princeton.
He had sensitive fantasies that he would die on the battlefields of France, and throughout 1917 and 1918 he was trained in different training camps, writing his first novel, "Romantic Egoists," every night at the officers' club. Egotist), before he was sent to the battlefield, the First World War was over.
For that generation of American youth, the First World War was a sad and harmless dream from beginning to end, and the vivid cries of fighting were echoed in their ears, and thousands of people fell— But never them.
The upper-class youth of the Northeast, adorned with straight officer uniforms and slender sabers, now have a new glory in addition to the fortunes of their fathers.
They were transported to the "Wild South" for training, and everything was so fresh: wild crops; naked blacks; towering hay; unbridled alcohol, and tobacco. In the midst of this natural primordial, eighteen-year-old Zelda Sayre walks onto the dance floor in every village and town like a barbarian princess.
"If Zelda comes, the other girls will just go home." "She's here, don't expect to dance tonight." "The firmest nose, the firmest little chin." "Alabama and the most beautiful girl in Georgia." Zelda Shar is a work of art; in her family's education, femininity is treated as a work of art and often misunderstood as life the full meaning.
She grew up in the most comfortable family in Alabama, the youngest daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court justice, and was doted on by her family. The wild outside world nourishes her uninhibited heart, just as the comfortable home life nourishes her amazing beauty. The best dance teacher taught her ballet, the best grammar teacher taught her French, and she was encouraged to read and write poetry.
She recalled her girlhood in her twilight years, "I never felt inferior or shy or suspicious, and I didn't have any moral standards." At eighteen, she had just graduated from high school and was the dream of all southern teenagers. Even—not just a dream lover, she's bold enough to have unofficial engagements with many men, although none of them get the final word.
She had long learned to smoke and drink, cut her hair as short as a boy's, and half-jokingly said, "I've kissed thousands of people, and I'm going to kiss thousands more."
In early July 1918, First Lieutenant Fitzgerald met Zelda at a country dance in Montgomery, Alabama. It was almost the same beginning as Seineva, surrounded by too much love for the princess. By. In The Romantic Egoist, written the same year, he would arrange a more private encounter for his imaginary self, where on a stormy evening, behind a haystack, his princess recites Verlaine's "Autumn Song", and then The princess sensed him: "Who's there! Who are you? Manfred, St. Christopher, or Queen Victoria?" In the novel, he exclaims, "I am Don Juan!"
July In the middle of the day, he received a letter from Seineva that she was about to get engaged to the son of her father's business partner the next day. She said excitedly, "Even to say that I am the happiest girl in the world is too modest!" He received another wedding invitation from Seinewa, but he did not attend, but the wedding invitation was pasted on a scrapbook of the permanent collection.
The second page of the scrapbook was the Chicago newspaper's report on the wedding. The profile of the newspaper takes up an entire page of the newspaper. On September 4, 1918, Sineva King was married. On September 7, 1918, Fitzgerald wrote in his notebook, "Seventh, fall in love." This time, with Zelda. In late 1918, with the end of World War I, Fitzgerald returned to New York. He asked Zelda to be engaged to him, and she agreed, of course like many other engagements she had agreed to, only informally.
Zelda reiterated, "Material is meaningless," but after a while, she said, "It's terrible to live a humble, monotonous life." She can sacrifice material things for romance, and her romance is when countless things come into her life precisely at the right time. Fitzgerald had to make a lot of money to marry Zelda, and the only job an underachieving college dropout could find was writing insignificant ads for an obscure agency.
In June 1919, Zelda in Alabama lost her patience and ended the engagement. A few days later, a frustrated Fitzgerald resigned from the company and returned to his home city of SĂŁo Paulo. No degree, no job, no lover.
3. This side of heaven
In the summer of 1919, at his parents' house in SĂŁo Paulo, the only thing Fitzgerald owned was his long autobiographical novel The Romantic Egoist, which had been twice returned by Scribners.
The older generation of editors at the publishing house thought the manuscript was chaotic and unintelligible, but the younger editor Maxwell Perkins saw the author's potential and encouraged him to rewrite, "now there is no substantial end to this story", "Neither the experience nor the character of the protagonist pushes the ending to a climax."
In the sweltering attic of his home, Fitzgerald rewrote the novel at Perkins' suggestion, and on September 4 he sent the revised draft to Berkins. Kings, renamed This Side of Paradise,[10] based on his Princeton life and two romances. This is his last bet.
He wants to use this novel to enter the literary world, gain fame, make enough money, and retake Zelda... I am afraid everyone will say that he wants too much.
On September 16, 1919, he received a reply from Perkins: "I am very pleased to tell you that we are going to publish your book." On March 26, 1920, "This Side of Heaven" was published, which is a youth novel with many spelling mistakes that have infected readers with its vibrant sense of the times.
On March 29, the first edition sold out. On March 30, Fitzgerald telegraphed to Zelda, "The book is selling well, come to New York." On April 3, Fitzgerald and Zelda were at the famous St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. marry. By 1921, This Side of Heaven was reprinted twelve times.
Fitzgerald became famous overnight, and everything was like a dream. In his essay "Echoes of the Jazz Age", he wrote: "This is the age of miracles, this is the age of art, this is the age of excess, and this is also the age of satire." The 1920s is also known as the "Jazz Age".
Over the next decade, the Fitzgeralds were the definitive voices of the Jazz Age, selling his short stories for $4,000 apiece and film rights even more. Zelda's photos and interviews often appear in various tabloids, always beautiful and elegant, always maverick, more people praise her, as "a goddess", a "born queen".
They are the guests of all parties, the regulars of all the fancy shops and bars, and the crazy travelers who never close their suitcases. In New York, Paris, and the Cote d'Azur, their villas are like Gatsby's house.
There is a very lyrical plot in "The Great Gatsby": Years later, the poor boy Gatsby became famous and bought a huge mansion on the other side of Daisy's villa on Long Island, New York. He didn't dare to visit Daisy rashly, he just held a luxurious party every day, hoping to attract Daisy's attention one day, but Daisy never came.
As it approached midnight, Gatsby came out of the lively party and looked at Daisy's house. "He stretched his arms out towards the dark water, and it was so odd, even though I was far away from him, I could swear he was shaking. I couldn't help looking out to sea too - couldn't see anything but a green light, small and far, maybe the end of a pier."[12]
At the party, he also fantasized countless times about the small and distant green light that doesn't exist at all, and Seinewa is behind the light, maybe one day he will actually appear at these parties along with the laughter... He must miss her a lot as he continues to miss her in all his creations and uses the money he makes to support his and Zelda's indulgent lives.
Let time stop at this moment, and let the halo of the golden age always remain on their young and proud faces, because this moment is too dreamy to add, and everything will be terrible and cruel after this.
How happy they were at this moment, they kept playing with the revolving door at the entrance of the hotel on their honeymoon, rolled over like no one else in the hotel lobby, rode on the top of the taxi, they jumped into the fountain of the Plaza Hotel, and got wet again Dancing on the table, they went to the theater to see comedy, and they agreed to laugh at the least funny places...
And then the madness of joy turns faster and faster, throwing all the joy away, only madness—she has a natural inspiration for words, and he appreciates her talent and encourages her to write. And then - he persuaded her to publish short stories under his name because it paid more.
He began to plagiarize her diaries and letters in large sections of the novel, and he did not take it seriously. In just a few years, his drinking habit became deeper and deeper, and he often stayed home late at night. Even at home, he was very drunk.
Her life was empty and boring, and she began to resume ballet. She was twenty-seven years old and could never become a professional ballet dancer again, but she trained herself even more frantically, practicing eight hours a day. In 1930, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia after intense ballet training induced a nervous breakdown.
And then—in 1932 when she finished her only novel, the autobiographical Save Me the Waltz, Fitzgerald forced her to cut out episodes related to her psychiatric history, not because he wanted Privacy, but because he used the same plot in his upcoming novel Tender Is the Night. He once said to Zelda in front of a psychiatrist: "Save yourself, you a third-rate writer and third-rate ballet dancer."
Then - alcoholism seriously affected his writing, and magazines and newspapers interrupted his relationship with him one after another. Appointment. Until one day, Fitzgerald could no longer find his book in any bookstore, and any bookstore salesperson said that he had never heard of such a writer.
Because of Zelda's illness, their marriage has been in existence since 1933. No one believed that Zelda would be cured, and she moved from one mental hospital to another, with worse facilities and dirtier rooms.
On December 21, 1940, at the age of forty-four, Fitzgerald died of a heart attack caused by alcoholism. His funeral was as shabby as Gatsby's in his novel fifteen years earlier, he was bankrupt before his death, and his will called for "the cheapest funeral."
He once held parties like Gatsby with his doors open every night, but only a few friends and family attended the funeral: his daughter, his editor Perkins, and his friend Dorothy Parker, the poetess. Zelda was trapped in a mental hospital and unable to attend the funeral, and the newspapers described Zelda as "his illegitimate wife", although he wrote to Zelda about her daughter two days before her death.
Dorothy Parker burst into tears at the funeral: "This poor son of a bitch." At Gatsby's lonely funeral, an attendee said exactly the same thing.
In the early morning of March 11, 1947, the mental hospital where Zelda was caught fire. Zelda was trapped on the top floor and burned to death at the age of forty-seven.
When Fitzgerald went from bad to worse in the 1920s, friends in literary circles scolded Zelda for ruining him. "Zelda's life is so extravagant that he has to write lousy novels to make a living." "Zelda is so weird, so changeable, he's so soft-hearted."
Fitzgerald was commented on in the 1960s The world has rediscovered that all kinds of academic research are flourishing, and feminists have set off the research on Zelda fever. Ruined a talented writer, painter, ballerina."
He ruined her, and she ruined him, but this is far from the deepest understanding and conflict between him and her. He couldn't help copying her brilliant diary into his own novel, and she couldn't help finding an identity for herself other than the writer's wife. He and she were confused about which part of their life was theirs and which part of their lives belonged to each other.
Even on her wildest and weakest days, they exchanged fiery love letters. She said to him: "The moon is like a lost coin falling into the mountains, the grass is gloomy and pungent, I want you to come close, I touch you, like the calm of autumn, even with a little summer's last echo." He said to her: " You are the most delicate, lovely, gentle, and beautiful person I have ever met, and even that is beyond words. No one else can endure what you have endured..."
Regarding death, Zelda wrote to her fiancé Fitzgerald in the spring of 1919: "Today I went to the cemetery - you know, it wasn't a cemetery - I wanted to open the iron in a rusted basement on the other side of the mountain. The door. It's washed white and covered with teary blue flowers that may have grown out of dead people's eyes and tasted sticky and disgusting...why do cemeteries have to make people feel empty?
I've heard too much about that, and Mr. Gray's words are convincing, but I don't find anything that ever grows hopeless - all the broken pillars and clenched hands And doves and angels symbolize romance, and then a hundred years from now I want younger people to guess if my eyes are brown or blue - neither of course - I want my tomb to look Like it's been many, many years - how strange, that row of Confederate soldiers' tombs, there are two or three that would make you think they were dead lovers or dead loves - they look exactly the same, even yellow on them The same is true of the moss. The old death is beautiful—truly beautiful—we will die together—I know—sweetheart—”
They didn’t die together, but they were buried together in his father’s hometown of Maryland State. His first love, Neva, lived forty years longer and witnessed the rise of grief after Fitzgerald's death.
The reprint of "The Great Gatsby" was regarded as classic American literature, but she kept it all her life. Back then, the love letters and diaries were locked in the corner of the closet, and I never thought to stand up and say, "I am that Daisy."
The Great Gatsby After Reading Notes
After reading a famous book, I believe that everyone has gained a lot of knowledge. I believe that you must have a lot of gains worth sharing. At this time, you need to make serious records and write down your feelings after reading.
So how do we write the afterthought? The following is the Great Gatsby after reading what we had collected for you. You are welcome to learn from it and refer to it. I hope it will be helpful to you.
"We fought our way forward, sailed against the current, and were pushed back constantly until we went back to the old days."
This is probably the case when reading when one unexpectedly encounters an extraordinary chapter, which makes people always worry about it, and reluctant to forget it. This is the last sentence of "The Great Gatsby", and it is because of this sentence that I found a book to read.
Although it is a different translation, it is the same good. I believe that many people came into contact with this book because of Haruki Murakami. After reading it, you will know that neither Murakami nor Fitzgerald has been disappointed.
Anyone who relies on words for food will always be careful about the language of their writing. It doesn't matter if they are beautiful or not, but they must be expressive.
In private, I feel that there are two kinds of good language: one is good to make people slap at the table and applaud; the other is to get into your arms, so warm and gentle, so good that people forget their feelings and forget their words. . The Great Gatsby occupies both, but especially the latter.
Leaving aside the major elements of the official novel, just as far as the text of this book is concerned, it can be regarded as extremely magnificent. If there are text fans who want to make excerpts, even if they are copied from the beginning to the end, it will not be a loss at all.
However, this is not Fitzgerald's quip, intended to surprise readers. What he did was not a simple stacking of ornate words, thus avoiding the pompous and empty end. Many excellent novels are very skillful in language. They are obviously teaching the big truth of life, but they are so precise and witty.
When I read them, I feel the blood rushing to the skull, which is called a strong resonance. There are also experienced novelists who can use deep words to write the emotions in the story into the reader's body and truly empathize with it. "The Great Gatsby" is a little different, Fitzgerald is more poetic language to describe a delicate emotion, it is unclear, but it evokes a lot of tenderness.
"My monthly season ticket was handed back to me with black sweat stains on his hands. In this scorching hot weather, who cares whose red lips he kisses or whose head wets his Pajama pocket on the chest."
Maybe the reader can follow the eyes of the characters to observe and touch, but it stops when it comes to imagination. Thoughts dispersed in the steaming heat and accumulated into another vague and charming story. There is another movie playing in the movie.
Although it is out of reach, they are willing to admit its beauty, which seems to be more than beautiful. Like a nephrite jade full of warm fragrance, love is infinite, but when you look up, you can see Feiyan's lightness and a baptism-like spiritual penetration on her forehead.
Having said so much language, finally, I have to talk about the background and story of the novel. The Great Gatsby is multifaceted, and even the plot and characters alone are wonderful. Rather than love as the main thread, the story is more about the individual's attitudes and feelings about everything they have, and it is these that tie the tasks together, and the love stretches from here.
When Gatsby is pursuing his love with Daisy, what he may be pursuing is only his own dream. In the dream, there is beauty that Gatsby would like to see, and he will keep chasing it. It's like a drunk person, who recognizes the bliss in the fantasy in front of him, can't wake up, and refuses to sleep.
Just like the green light on the pier of Daisy's house that never goes out all night, Gatsby believes in it, but it cannot last forever in his arms. Maybe we can foresee the disappointment after the people leave, but before that, those who understand and do not understand will be intoxicated, singing and dancing, and having graceful posture.
As a piece of jazz, it's slow and frankly erotic, yet graceful. It's golden and rosy as well. Fitzgerald called it the "Jazz Age", indulging in sensuality, with the mellow aroma of red wine entangled in his fingers, and even the air like a woman's fat powder.
The so-called "joys and sorrows of the floating world", and "The Great Gates" turned over and used those joys and sorrows that rose and fell as the background, but it was this flashy world that held up.
Fitzgerald was drunk, cleverly drunk. Hemingway once commented on Fitzgerald, "Since he can write a book as good as "The Great Gatsby", I believe he can write a better book."
Hemingway is always harsh, and such evaluation is not easy. But what is better, it will be stumped for many people. When we are faced with a truly good thing, to the point of being full of joy, there is absolutely no way our intellect can think of where it can be improved.
The Great Gatsby is such a book for me. There are too many remarkable points in it, and I am afraid that it is longer than it is to write it. It is impossible to avoid omissions. Here are just a few. Go read it, you won't be disappointed.
What do you think of The Great Gatsby?
Gatsby spent his whole life with his obsession and did not get a single tear from Daisy. Although this long-cherished wish sounds very affectionate, it is divorced from reality and is destined to be a tragedy. Maybe all this was wrong from the very beginning of the obsession. Gatsby's death also heralded the disillusionment of the young Americans who blindly pursued their dreams at that time.
"The Great Gatsby", which has been washed over the years and has been revived with timeless charm, tells us:
- Truth 1: Don't lose your true self when choosing your dreams
- Truth 2: The pursuit of dreams in a boat-and-sword style is pure self-deception
- Truth 3: A strong heart does not need to rely on the admiration and flattery of others, but comes from inner approval
Finally, a reminder that our contemporary youth should not repeat the mistakes of Gatsby, such as that false sophistication, excessive consumption, and various loans in life. Those who look gorgeous, in fact, are full of hidden dangers. Only by being down-to-earth, following our heart, not forgetting our original intention, and pursuing some practical ideals can we achieve success. I hope that every dream of yours will not be let down by the times!