Abstract:

The novel of The Great Gatsby, set in New York City and the Long Island of the 1920s, tells a story of the illusions of the American dream and paints pictures of success and failure, love and bitterness, hedonism and hardship, and the conflicts between East Egg and West Egg. Through analysing the employment of symbolism in terms of colors and specific objects, this paper reveals how symbolism helps develop characters, and thus gains an insight into the theme of the novel.

Key words: symbolism; colors; objects; characters; theme

摘要：

《了不起的盖茨比》是一部以20世纪20年代的纽约市和长岛为背景的小说。它讲述了一个关于美国梦幻灭的故事，书中描绘了成功与失败、爱情与痛苦、享乐与潦倒、东部与西部的冲突这一幅幅画面。本文将主要讨论小说中象征主义手法的运用。通过对书中所描写的颜色词汇和一些具体事物的意象进行分析，来解读这些意象对小说人物的塑造、故事情节的推动以及小说主题的揭示所起的关键作用。

关键词：象征主义；颜色；事物；人物；情节；主题

1. Introduction
1.1 Introduction to The Great Gatsby
   The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, is the masterpiece of F. Scott Fitzgerald. As a result of this work, Fitzgerald is regarded as the laureate of American literature in the “Jazz Age”, because he paints an accurate picture of American society at that time: jazz music, popular trends, illegal deals, and new wealth. As Fitzgerald has rightly put it, 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. “T. S. Eliot read his book several times and commented that it was ‘the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James’ ” (Wang, 2011:264). As one of the greatest novels of American literature, The Great Gatsby has received extensive critical attention both at home and abroad since the middle of the 20th century. On top of a huge amount of academic research on it, The Great Gatsby has been adapted into different versions of film.