The Comparison Between Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby And Yates’ Revolutionary Road

As an important writer of "the Jazz Age" of the United States, Fitzgerald (Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald),wrote his masterpiece The Great Gatsby,which highlights the1920s’ social conditions in the US,such as money worship and hedonism, and vividly shows the people of that era longing for "the American Dream" but ultimately ending in tragedy. Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road criticized the spiritual numbness, ease and Conservatism prevalent in the1950s, when American people had gradually forgotten the American Dream. In this thesis, a comparative study of these two works, I try to discover abundant social criticism and literary artistic values of the two novels.Chapter One compares the two writers in life experiences and different time backgrounds, to examine the social backgrounds of the two novels, and analyze the two novelists’different status and influence in American.Chapter Two mainly compares the leading roles in the two works, Gatsby of The Great Gatsby and April of Revolutionary Road. They are both idealists of their own era,"’ and they have experienced similar stages as the reflection on self-identity, an effort towards self-realization in social identity, lonely destruction.They are in search of their own identity and pursure a life of their own.Chapter Three compares the two works in social criticism. Even though these two books reflect status of different times, their critiques on social issues have gone beyond their own time. This chapter mainly discusses the social values, spiritual crisis, hypocritical and indifferent relationships,in order to explore the similar social conditions which are reflected in their works, and analyse the"American Dream" in both novels.Chapter Four compares the artistic characteristics of the two works, mainly from the perspectives of narrative point of view, artistic and linguistic styles.The Great Gatsby and Revolutionary Road are excellent representatives of the20th century works of American literature, which reflect the authors’ profound thinking of their time and their great literary creations of painstaking exploration. A comparison of these two works is of great significance in exploring the values of American literature in the20th century.