本科生期末论文设计范文.doc

美国文学期末论文( 2009届 )题 目： 了不起的盖兹比中的色彩象征浅析 学 院： 外 国 语 学 院 专 业： 英 语 学生姓名： 周安妮 学号： 09090221 指导教师： 江玉娇 职称： 教授 合作导师： 职称： 完成时间： 2011 年 12 月 成 绩： 1The color symbolism in The Great Gatsby浙江师范大学本科毕业设计(论文)正文目 录Abstract1Key words1摘 要1关键词11Introduction:22Symbolic Colors22.1Green32.2White32.3Gray43Conclusion4The Color Symbolism in The Great GatsbyZhou AnniAbstract: F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. The Great Gatsby, considered as his masterpiece, is colorful with its writing characteristics. And various kinds of symbolism are well used in the single novel. Fitzgerald applied lots of colors to enrich the story in both plot settings and character shaping. This paper will focus on 3 major colors, green, white, and gray, emphasized in the novel.Key words: color, symbolism, plot settings, character shaping了不起的盖兹比中的色彩象征浅析周安妮摘 要：弗斯科特菲兹杰拉德一生中创作了五部小说，每一部都是经典之作，为他在20世纪的美国文学界赢得了相当的地位，至今仍未世人称道。了不起的盖兹比作为他最著名的代表作，情节跌宕有趣，人物个性鲜明，这很大程度上得益于菲兹杰拉德精妙的写作手法。在这一部并不算长的小说中，融合了多种艺术技巧，其中象征手法的运用尤为出色。本文将着重于小说中色彩象征的运用，主要对其中3种主要的色彩进行适当的分析，以了解其对于情节建构与人物塑造的作用。关键词： 色彩，象征，情节建构，人物塑造 The Color Symbolism in The Great GatsbyFLC 2009（02）（English）Zhou AnniTutor: Jiang Yujiao1 Introduction: The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 December 21, 1940). He was an American author of novels and short stories. His works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term coined himself. Considered a member of the “Lost Generation”, he was also regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. During his whole life, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote 5 novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, The Last Tycoon. And The Great Gatsby was treated as his masterpiece. The story is narrated by Nick Carraway, who rents a house in West Egg, Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich. His next-door neighbor is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, a millionaire bout whom there is plenty of rumors of bootlegging and other criminal activities. And Gatsby has been in love with Daisy, Nicks cousin, before she married Tom Buchanan. Gatsby is so deeply in love with her that his extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply attempt to impress Daisy. And their frequent connection results in their love with each other. Discovering this, Tom is outraged and confronts Gatsby and announces that Gatsby is a criminal because his fortune comes from bootlegging, alcohol and other illegal activities. But Tom believes that his relationship with his wife is beyond anything that Gatsby could imagine, so he even allows the two to return from New York to Long Island alone. On the way back, their car runs over and kills Myrtle, Toms lover. Although it was Daisy that drove the car, Gatsby insists on protecting for her and taking the blame. Tom tells Myrtles husband George that the car belonged to Gatsby and George is convinced that the car is of Myrtles lover. He is with great wrath and shoots Gatsby and then himself. Nick organizes a small funeral for Gatsby, which Gatsbys “friends” refuse to attend.There is no doubt that The Great Gatsby has contributed a lot to the American literature. And it also has a great number of readers today. When I read it, Im greatly pleased by its language features, and its writing characteristics are very useful to me. And it is the color symbolism that impresses me most. In the following paragraphs, I will analyze some symbolic colors in this novel.2 Symbolic ColorsAn important symbolism in The Great Gatsby is the color symbolism. All the readers can find a colorful word in it, and there are so many colors in it.2.1 GreenGreen as one of the colors has its own symbol. Traditionally, it presents the hope and bright future. In the novel, it can symbolize more than the meaning of its color. When Gatsby worked in the field at his 17, wearing that worn-out green jersey, he was in the climate of ambition and hope. Also there is a light appears from the very beginning to the end. The light is green. In the end of chapter one, the first time Nick saw Gatsby: “He stretched out his arms towards the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.” (Chapter One, Page 19, Beijing: China Translation & Publishing Corporation, 2009) And readers can easily realize that the green light presents Daisy, the one Gatsby has fallen in love with deeply from the WWI. Indeed, Gatsby has never forgotten Daisy even for one minute during the five years when they lived separately, and he believes that he will have a happy ending with her. But he also knows that he can not reach her without a large fortune, so the green light is also the symbol of fortune and “American Dream”. From the description of the green light, we also can find that it is far from Gatsbys reaching, so the green light, as the symbol of love, fortune, and the “American dream”, always seems to be so close to Gatsby and also us that we can hardly fail to grasp it, but in fact, it is always beyond our reach, as it expresses in the last words of the book: “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but thats no matter tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms fartherAnd one fine morning So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” (Chapter 8, Page 164, Beijing: China Translation & Publishing Corporation, 2009)2.2 WhiteWe would like to consider white as a symbol of innocence and pureness. When Nick saw Daisy the first in Toms house, the lady was in white and her dress were rippling and fluttering as if she had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. It is by this kind of innocent appearance that Gatsby was and has been impressed and moved deeply. And thats also why Daisy becomes Gatsbys dream all his life. Ironically, white here also presents death, terror, evil, and nothingness. Daisy likes white. She has white dresses, white sports car; and lives in the white palace where “the windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up towards the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.” (Chapter 1, Page 7, Beijing: China Translation & Publishing Corporation, 2009) All these factors seem to be beautiful and holy, but indeed express the big blank in Daisys life and mind. And even “Daisy”, a kind of small white flower, tells Daisys vanity and shallowness. And so is Gatsby as he also bought the white house and dress himself all white for the appointment with Daisy. He is in pursuit of nothing but marring Daisy. And his shallowness can not be hidden even by the large fortune and the opulent lifestyle. 2.3 GrayThe color of gray always gives people such an impression as desolation, gloom, and disillusion. In Chapter 2, Fitzgerald described “a valley of ashes” “a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.” (Chapter 1, Page 20, Beijing: China Translation & Publishing Corporation, 2009)The “ashes” refers to the disillusion and also death. Indeed, Gatsby has spent his whole life seeking for innocence and beauty in a wasteland of morals built by such people as Tom and Daisy. But h