Discourse Strategies In The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald is generally counted as the spokesman of the "Lost Generation" and the chronicler of the 1920s in America. It is the peculiar decade, rich in goods, but ragged in spirit. Indulged in the trend of hedonism, people discard traditional moral completely. Fitzgerald is an insider as well as outsider of the time. Although he participates in the pleasure-seeking life in 1920s, he is self-conscious with detached observation of it, not submitting to the disillusionment of his dream. His works give the realistic reflection to the social conditions of that time, and at the same time, attempt to find a way to the salvation of human and himself.His semi-autobiographic work, The Great Gatsby is always regarded as one of the masterpieces in 20th century American works due to its incarnation of American social life of the time. However, for a long time, the critics have ignored the incongruity between Gatsby's sinister gang identity and his graceful and innocent character.The thesis tries to illustrate this phenomenon by adopting the discourse strategies of otherization, idealization and rationalization. Otherization refers to a kind of language policy which tries to confirm oneself by degrading and despising others.In the novel The Great Getsby, Fitzgerald sets up an image of otherness in the Buchanan couple, highlighting their evil qualities of selfishness, snobishness, cruelty and irresponsibility, while donates all the good ones of loyalty, generosity, self-discinpline and dedication to Gatsby, thus forsters an angel of love in the vicious world. Although there are some similarities between the image of Gatsby and Fitzgerald himself, there are also contrasts between them. Fitzgerald, unlike Gatsby, fails to risist the lure of drowning in the tide of hedonism and drifts along in reality.He gets lost at last because of heavy debts. The author here tries to find a way to account for his unpleasantness in daily life through the policy of otherization, the image of Gatsby, and Nick's rational analysis to the eastern and western America, which, actually, will lead to a discount of the credibility of the characters and a revealing of a flaw in the novel. The Great Gatsby has its inspiring social and historical significance, which makes readers read it further and gives them much food for thought each time. Generally, internal and foreign scholars have studied The Great Gatsby from the aspects of Feminist Criticism, structuralism, myth and archetypal criticism,etc, but few have examined it from the perspective of otherization, idealization and rationalization. This thesis is going to analyze the image of the protagonists in the novel, therefore, to help readers get deep undertanding of it.