An Analysis Of The Great Gatsby From The Perspective Of Deviation

The Great Gatsby is regarded as one of the best American novels.Fitzgerald?s insightful opinions of the corrupted American dream,vivid description of the materialism and spiritual emptiness dominant in American society,and delicate treatment of characters from different classes have aroused enormous interest of literary critics to probe into its themes and characters from different perspectives.Nevertheless,few scholars have chosen to study it from the perspective of deviation because on one hand,the deviation theory is mainly employed to analyze poems and on the other hand,realistic novels aiming at revealing the real conditions of the society and stressing the authenticity and objectivity of characters are considered to have no deviation.Therefore,given the unique writing style of the novel,the author of this thesis analyzes it from the perspective of deviation,applying the deviation theory in the study of realistic novel and appreciating The Great Gatsby from a new perspective.The thesis consists of three parts: introduction,main body,and conclusion.The introduction includes a general review of the international and domestic studies of The Great Gatsby,a brief introduction of deviation theory,an explanation of the analysis methods and research significances.The main body contains four chapters.In the first chapter,deviation of language relating to characters,scenes,and themes are analyzed respectively.And as language deviation can be further divided into graphological deviation,lexical deviation,grammatical deviation,and semantic deviation,this thesis thus analyzes these four types of deviation relevant to specific characters,scenes,and themes.In the second chapter,deviation of structure in the novel is analyzed.And it is further divided into the analysis of deviation of narrative order and the analysis of deviation of narrative duration.The former includes retrospect narration,preorder narration,and delayed narration.The latter includes narrative duration to control the plot development,narrative duration to shape characters,and narrative duration to enforce the themes.In the third chapter,deviation of point of view is analyzed in detail.It includes three aspects: deviation towards “experiencing I”,deviation towards second-person point of view,and deviation towards third-person point of view.In the last chapter,deviation of schema in the novel is analyzed.There are three sections in this chapter.The first section analyzes deviation of the narrator,Nick.It studies how Nick deviates in his narration,value,and self-evaluation.The second section analyzes deviation of the title,which explores whether Gatsby is great or not from the perspectives of his love,value,and identity.The third section analyzes deviation of plot mode,containing the comparative study of the traditional “seek-find” mode and the “seek-find-lose” mode of Gatsby.In Conclusion,the findings and the limitations of the thesis are pointed out.Few studies have appreciated the novel from the perspective of deviation.The existing ones mainly concentrate on the deviation at the linguistic level and are not comprehensive.This thesis,however,not only analyzes its deviation at the linguistic level more systematically,but also analyzes the deviation at non-linguistic levels,including structure,point of view,and schema.Therefore,through this thesis,readers can have a better understanding of the novel.