摘要

菲茨杰拉德是公认的二十世纪美国最杰出的爵士时代的小说家。其代表作《了不起的盖茨比》则被视为最能生动形象地反映美国二十世纪二十年代的社会现实。本论文先简要介绍菲茨杰拉德和《了不起的盖茨比》接着分析《了不起的盖茨比》中的主要人物黛西,盖茨比和他们眼中的变质的美国梦，总结出盖茨比悲剧的根源是盖茨比是对当时美国物欲横流，精神空虚的生活状态的追求，为了物质的丰富和自我标榜而不择手段，已然不是当初那个积极向上为了实现人生自我价值的美国梦。

关键词：《了不起的盖茨比》，美国梦，悲剧根源

Abstract

    Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald is one of the most outstanding American novelist in Jazz Age in twentieth Century. This paper first briefly introduces Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby and then analyzes the main characters Daisy, Gatsby in The Great Gatsby and the America dream in their eyes which have already been deteriorated. It can be summed up that the root of Gatsby’s tragedy is that Gatsby gets fortune and self frame by all means. The American dream is no longer the real American dream which represents an eager of self value realization by positive hard work.

KEY WORDS: The Great Gatsby, American Dream, Tragic Roots

1. Background Introduction
Written in 1922, F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is often referred to as The Great American Novel and as the quintessential work which captures the mood of the Jazz Age.
Fitzgerald was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1896, and educated at Princeton, although he dropped out to join the army before he completed his degree. Stationed near Montgomery, Alabama, he met and later married Zelda Sayre, a high-strung woman from a family more prominent than his own. His first novel, This Side of Paradise, published in 1920, was a tremendous critical and commercial success. Fitzgerald followed with The Beautiful and the Damned in 1922, The Great Gatsby in 1925, Tender in the Night (1934), and was working on The Last Tycoon (1941) when he died, in Hollywood in 1940.
Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was a staple of the canon of American literature after World War II.
The Great Gatsby which was written in 1925 is one of the best novels in the United States in the twentieth century. What’s interesting is that it is almost the same time with the time background of the novel story. There is no doubt that the writer Fitzgerald wrote a story full of the spirit of the times.