Abstract

The Great Gatsby, one of Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s most important novels, laid foundation of Fitzgerald’s status in American modern literature. This paper is a detailed study of how the consuming culture of the American 1920s is represented in The Great Gatsby from different facets. The paper starts from the social background of 1920s, and further explores how the consuming culture of 1920s is represented by the characterization as well as the writing of the settings in the novel.

Key words:  Francis Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Consuming Culture, representation

摘 要

《了不起的盖茨比》是弗朗西斯•司各特•菲茨杰拉德最著名的小说之一，该书奠定了他在美国现代文学中的地位。本文主要研究了《了不起的盖茨》比如何从各个方面体现1920年的美国消费文化。该篇论文首先介绍了1920年美国的社会背景，进而更深层次地探究了作者如何在小说中通过人物塑造以及消费场景书写再现1920年的消费文化。

关键词：弗朗西斯•司各特•菲茨杰拉德；《了不起的盖茨比》；消费文化；再现


1.    Introduction
    Francis Scott Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories. Born as he in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Fitzgerald lived in an upper middle class Irish Catholic family. Fitzgerald once owned money and talent, which pinned him down in his whole life, and lost both of two things at last. His career as a writer began with the publication of This Side of Paradise which made him gain both fame and wealth. And then, through his career, he produced quite a number of works, among which The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender Is the Night (1934) are well-known to Chinese readers. Fitzgerald is the typical writer of “Lost Generation”, “the Roaring 20s” and he epitomizes the “Jazz Age”, a term he coined by himself.