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1、苏州大学应用技术学院2009级学士学位论文A Study of Color Symbolism in The Great Gatsby了不起的盖茨比中颜色象征意义研究专业：09英语学号：0916411014姓名：周丽莎导师：张荣兴2012.12.23AcknowledgementsThe thesis would probably have never been possible without the help, support, foresight and inspiration of my supervisor, teachers and classmates, so I would l
2、ike to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to all of them.My deepest gratitude goes first to my supervisor, Mr. Zhang Rongxing, who has contributed to getting the nuts and bolts of the thesis into place. His careful and microscopic scrutiny of the manuscript resulted in the elimi
3、nation of many inconsistencies and in the development of the study throughout the thesis. His witty ideas and valuable advice brought me a new way of learning and different vision of the research. Whats more, my thanks go to my parents and friends who give me support and encouragement. AbstractFranc
4、is Scott Fitzgerald, one of the most prominent novelists in American literary history in the 1920s, has been regarded as “the singer of the jazz age”, and “chronicler” and “poets Laureate”. He works give us an accurate picture of the social state of America in early twenties of last century. The Gre
5、at Gatsby is Fitzgeralds finest novel, which was published in 1925, and Eliot considered it “to be the first step that America has taken since Henry James”. Finished in 1925, this novel wins lots of favorable praise. Nowadays, people keep reading it, and many films have been adopted from it. Just as
6、 above said, The Great Gatsby is a symbolism story, in which, many color symbols are used, for example, green and green light, blue, yellow or golden and so on. This paper will analyze the novel by means of the respective symbolism meanings of these color symbols.Key words: Francis Scott Fitzgerald;
7、 The Great Gatsby; color; symbolism.摘要美国著名象征主义代表作家Francis Scott Fitzgerald ，20世纪20年代美国文坛最著名的作家之一，素有爵士时代代言人，编年史家和桂冠诗人的称号。他的作品准确地反映了美国上世纪20年代的社会状况，在1925年正式发表的小说了不起的盖茨比是菲兹杰拉德最棒的文学作品之一，且被Eliot认为是“自亨利 詹姆士以来美国小说史上跨出的第一步”，了不起的盖茨比受到读者和评论界的一致好评，直到现在还有很多人愿意去读这部作品，并且不断有人把这部小说改编成电影搬上大荧幕。 就像上面所提到的，了不起的盖茨比一书中在颜色，
8、人物等方面运用了大量的象征手法，这篇小说之所以取得这么大的成功，不仅仅在于它深刻的主题，还得益于象征手法的独创运用，象征的使用，使他的作品超越了狭隘的个人天地，放大个人经历并赋予其代表性。在此之中，颜色的象征是其着墨最多，也是最成功的。比如绿色跟绿灯的象征作用，绿色是作者频繁运用的颜色之一，也是追随主人盖茨比一生的主色调。白色也是作者着力运用的象征手法之一，还有黄色，黄色是金子的颜色，小说用黄色来象征拜金主义和腐化堕落。除此之外还有蓝色，灰色等等。颜色象征是这部小说最大的特点，所以我这篇论文主要分析讨论这篇小说中的颜色的象征意义。关键词：菲兹杰拉德；了不起的盖茨比；颜色；象征。Contents
9、Acknowledgements.II Abstract.III摘要.IVChapter 1 Introduction1Chapter 2 Literature Review32.1 Symbolism32.2 Related studies4Chapter 3 Colors and Their Symbolic meanings in The Great Gatsby63.1 Green: symbol of life ,hope, envy and destroy63.2 Blue: symbol of illusion113.3 White: symbol of innocence123
10、.4 Yellow: symbol of wealth, money and death133.5 Gray: symbol of hopeless133.6 Pink: symbol of love and persistency14Chapter 4 Conclusion16References18文献综述报告19Chapter 1 IntroductionFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, and named after his ancestor Francis Scott Key, the autho
11、r of The Star-Spangled Banner. Fitzgerald was raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Though an intelligent child, he did poorly in school and was sent to a New Jersey boarding school in 1911. Despite being a mediocre student there, he managed to enroll at Princeton in 1913. Academic troubles and apathy plag
12、ued him throughout his time at college, and he never graduated, instead enlisting in the army in 1917, as World War I neared its end.Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of 1920s America, an era that he dubbed “the Jazz Age” Written in 1925, The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest literary docu
13、ments of this period, in which the American economy soared, bringing unprecedented levels of prosperity to the nation. Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found the new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and, like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. Now he found himself in an era in w
14、hich unrestrained materialism set the tone of society, particularly in the large cities of the East, even so, like Nick, Fitzgerald saw through the glitter of the Jazz Age to the moral emptiness and hypocrisy beneath, and part of him longed for this absent moral center. In ways， The Great Gatsby rep
15、resents Fitzgeralds attempt to confront his conflicting feelings about the Jazz Age. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald was driven by his love for a woman who symbolized everything he wanted, even as she led him toward everything he despised.Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a li
16、terary work. On the surface, The Great Gatsby is a story of the thwarted love between a man and a woman. The main theme of the novel, however, encompasses a much larger, less romantic scope. Though all of its action takes place over a mere few months during the summer of 1922 and is set in a circums
17、cribed geographical area in the vicinity of Long Island, New York, The Great Gatsby is a highly symbolic meditation on 1920s America as a whole, in particular the disintegration of the American dream in an era of unprecedented prosperity and material excess.Fitzgerald portrays the 1920s as an era of
18、 decayed social and moral values, evidenced in its overarching cynicism, greed, and empty pursuit of pleasure. The reckless jubilance that led to decadent parties and wild jazz musicepitomized in The Great Gatsby by the opulent parties that Gatsby throws every Saturday nightresulted ultimately in th
19、e corruption of the American dream, as the unrestrained desire for money and pleasure surpassed more noble goals. When World War I ended in 1918, the generation of young Americans who had fought the war became intensely disillusioned, as the brutal carnage that they had just faced made the Victorian
20、 social morality of early-twentieth-century America seem like stuffy, empty hypocrisy. The dizzying rise of the stock market in the aftermath of the war led to a sudden, sustained increase in the national wealth and a newfound materialism, as people began to spend and consume at unprecedented levels
21、. A person from any social background could, potentially make a fortune, but the American aristocracyfamilies with old wealthscorned the newly rich industrialists and speculators. Additionally, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the sale of alcohol, created a thriving unde
22、rworld designed to satisfy the massive demand for bootleg liquor among rich and poor alike.This thesis includes four chapters. The first chapter introduces the author and literary themes, and the structure of the thesis. The second chapter is a literature review, briefly going over related studies h
23、ome and abroad and some key concepts the thesis uses. The third chapter discusses the authors employment of symbolism in the novel, including the name of the characters, etc. The last chapter comes to the conclusion of this thesis.Chapter 2 Literature Review2.1 SymbolismIn totally words, symbols are
24、 objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.Symbolism refers to movements in both literature and the visual arts during the late 19th Century. It appeared in the 1880s among French poets, les potes maudits, who developed an idealistic type of verse, as a rea
25、ction to Naturalism and Realism. The Symbolists drew inspiration from the mid-century poetry and critical writing of Charles Baudelaire and also from the earlier works ofEdgar Allen Poe. A number of manifestoes were published in the 1880s, including “Le Symbolism”, by Jean Moras in 1886.Like emotion
26、s, colors also symbolize different things. Color symbolism can have a powerful effect on human emotion. The color black represents evil or sadness. This is why the color black is used more in funerals. Black is also used when celebrating birthdays of people reaching middle age. The reason for this i
27、s that everyone is supposed to be sad that the person is getting old. When black is used this way, it also becomes funny. We call this irony, but that topic is for another time and another website. The color white symbolizes purity and life. This is why you see the color white in weddings and usuall
28、y see angels dressed in white gowns. “Color symbolizes different things in different parts of the world. Color symbolism is also important to companies around the world. When we think of certain colors and shapes we think of certain companies”（李稚阳、张允 2006）. In world Culture, color means many differe
29、nt things to different people and cultures. We all have our own favorite colors. People like different colors like they like different foods. Color also represents feelings, people, countries, cultures, and color symbolism. In the western world, the color red is seen frequently of symbolizing anger
30、or aggression. Some car insurance companies charge more for red cars because some of the owners of red cars are more aggressive or take more risks.By the way, we can see lots of colors in this story, for instance, the green light , red tower, gray valley, golden car and so on . If you are a careful
31、reader, you must be able to pick out something from those colors, because colors can speak under Fitzgeralds pen, and these colors all have their meanings.2.2 Related StudiesThe definition of symbolism in literature is “any object, person, place or action that has both a meaning in itself and that s
32、tands for something larger than itself, such as an idea, belief or value”(刘爱星 2005). Symbolism as a literature device was frequently used in various works. In John Bunyans books, for example, everything and every person appearing presents something more than themselves. Its obvious that the protagon
33、ist Christians stands for every Christian reader, and his goal, the Celestial city, is the representation of Heaven. The places through which had passed on his way, such as the Lucre, Vanity Fair and so on stands for the temptations that Bunyan felt Christian readers were likely to encounter on thei
34、r journey to salvation. Even the names of Christians fellow travelersMr. Feeble-mind and great-heart, all represent not individual characters but the states of being. Similarly, at the beginning of F.Scott Fitzgeralds novel, The Great Gatsby, there is the famous scene of the valley of ashes where To
35、m Buchanans mistress Myrtle lives（胡敏2006）. Although Fitzgerald didnt make it clear, its obvious that the valley of ashes represents the real state of Toms soul. In peoples mind, his residence is in a mansion on the beautiful bay at East Egg, where everything is expensive and tasteful, while the inwa
36、rdly rotten. Spiritually desiccated Tom really lives where his heart does, in a grim ashes valley, presided over by a billboard decorated a huge pair of bespectacled eyes. The eyes represent God, who can see Toms actions and knows the interior of his heart, but seems powerless to intervene. The abov
37、e examples confirm that symbolism is an integral component of fiction, which enriches the narrative by pulling its message down to the level of peoples unconsciousness and anchoring it there.Although previous studies have analyzed the symbolism of the characters and this novel, further studies shoul
38、d be conducted on the authors employment of symbolism in The Great Gatsby. Chapter 3 aims at a detailed exploration of symbolic meanings of colors characters and objects.Chapter 3 Colors and Their Symbolic meanings in The Great Gatsby3.1 Green : symbol of life, hope, envy and destroyThe color green
39、calls our attention at first. It emerges at the beginning of the story, and the green light. Seeing the color green, we are going to think about plants, trees, grass and everything in springtime. And spring is a season of life, hope and future, In a word, the color green can symbolize hope and dream
40、.Green stands as the most prominent color Fitzgerald employs in The Great Gatsby. Green is significantly associated with both “the green light of Daisys dock” and the green breast of the new world, which unites the hope and promise of Gatsbys dream with that of America itself. The color green is tra
41、ditionally associated with spring, hope, and youth. Throughout the novel, green has many possible interpretations, but its use to explain Gatsbys character is probably the most meaningful in the story. One possible meaning of the color green is envy. Gatsby can be seen as a jealous character. He onc
42、e had the love of his life, Daisy, but now she is married to another man. He spends all of his time and effort in an attempt to win back Daisy. He is also jealous of many of the wealthy people around his home. He makes huge parties and luxurious get-togethers, so he can relate with the wealthy. This
43、 leads one to believe that Gatsby is indeed green with envy. It is also probable that Fitzgerald uses green to symbolize money and its power in society. Money rules the lives of the people in the story. Gatsby needs money to keep the life that he does. Gatsby also feels he needs the money to get bac
44、k together with Daisy. He has “a large green lawn” and “green ivy” going up his house. Inside Gatsbys car, the passengers sit in a sort of green leather conservatory. All of these things represent the riches, as well as the importance of money in Gatsbys life. The color green can both symbolize envy
45、 and money; however, the most reasonable meaning would have to be one of future hope, especially in Gatsbys case. The use of a green light at the end of a landing stage to signal a romantic reunion is intriguingly similar to the green light at the end of Daisys Buchanans dock, which becomes key imag
46、e in The Great Gatsby. The green light located at the end of the Buchanans dock and is barely visible from Gatsbys West Egg lawn must have given the readers deep impressionThe first appearance of the green light occurs when Nick sees Gatsby for the first time, standing in front of his mansion and st
47、retching out his arms to .a single green light, minute and far away that might have been the end of dock. The light becomes, for Gatsby, the symbol of a reunion with Daisy. This is a wonderful and appropriate symbol of Gatsbys life. Gatsby is living alone in a world of darkness, trying to grasp one small thing to bring him happiness. His life has had many shortcomings and many troubles through his younger years. He finally receives some breaks and is able make a name for himself
