Dark Humor In The Great Gatsby

The novel The Great Gatsby is F.Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece.The tragicality of its story has been widely recognized,but one important aspect,i.e.dark humor in the novel,has been largely neglected by academia up till now.This thesis argues that dark humor is an essential part of the novel,and that an in-depth analysis of it is indispensable for a thorough evaluation of the overall artistic effect and wealth of the novel.The thesis thus is aimed to study the features of dark humor and its working mechanism in the novel,and to explore what important role it plays in constructing the great American tragedy of Gatsby.The study takes two basic elements of novels,i.e.setting and characterization,as the sites to observe and analyze the art of humor.Examples of humor are chosen for close and textual analysis.The analysis is made on the basis of the humor theory of incongruity.Other approaches,such as those in literary stylistics,theory of grotesquery,Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of carnivalization,tricksterism theory,and Henri Bergson's theory of laughter,are applied to the analysis.The study brings to light the proliferation of humor elements and the diversity of devices and complexity of mechanism in the novel's art of humor.While the style of deadpan humor and the tricksterism characterization in the novel is rooted in American humor tradition represented by Mark Twain,Fitzgerald's art of humor has its own distinctive features,which are the Humor of Romanticism,humor produced by carnivalesque narration,and humor via the selective description of the human body parts.The grotesque construction of the setting and the humorous characterization in the novel serve to exponentially intensify the tragic effect of the story,for they constitute the wasteland surroundings where the great tragedy of Gatsby takes place.The thesis has four chapters.Chapter One first makes a literature review to summarizes the reasons why the elements of dark humor in the novel has been long neglected by the academia,discusses the definition of dark humor,and then briefly introduces the analysis framework of the study.Chapter Two explores the first aspect of the novel's dark humor,i.e.the grotesque construction of settings,including the grotesque construction of natural and social environment,and the grotesque construction of the outdoor and indoor environment.Chapter Three explores the second aspect of the novel's dark humor,analyzing how the novel shapes the principal villain Tom Buchanan as a vicious and comical trickster,how the novel portrays the main heroine Myrtle Wilson as a naive,pathetic clown,and the grotesque delineation of the other figures.Chapter Four arrives at a conclusion for the thesis,summarizing the findings of the study and the points which are not fully discussed and thus worth further study.