Moth Webbed Before Light

The Great Gatsby is widely acknowledged as the magnum opus of Francis Scott Fitzgerald and has yet to lose its grip on readers and literary critics for nearly a century.This thesis aims to approach The Great Gatsby from the perspective of American Bildungsroman.Through a close reading of the text,this thesis intends to reveal how the hero’s “frozen youth” is presented in the novel,explore the reasons for such stagnation,and uncover the cultural expression of his “frozen youth.”The introduction includes a brief review of the Bildungsroman theory and a summary of the distinctions between classical Bildungsroman and its American counterpart.The body of the thesis is divided into three chapters.Chapter I primarily sheds light upon Gatsby’s frozen growth from the perspective of American Bildungsroman.The hero’s stalled mental development is manifested in his conflicting attitudes towards the future and the past as well as his circular growth.On the one hand,the hero refuses to retreat from the new quests that lie ahead.On the other hand,he is obsessed with the good old days and endeavors to recapture his lost dream.The two forces cancel each other out,making the hero’s growth path a circular one.Chapter II subsequently delves into the contributing factors to Gatsby’s arrested development or unsuccessful spiritual transformation into adulthood.This section is expanded upon in two respects: the inner developing of the protagonist and the outer enveloping of the society.The former mainly involves the hero’s limited understanding due to his excessive romanticism,while the latter includes the three influential figures in Gatsby’s spiritual growth,and the social and cultural milieu of the Jazz Age,which focuses on the consumption-based society and a wavering moral compass.Internal and external factors work together to render Gatsby a “frozen youth,” leading him into despair and confusion.Chapter III analyzes the cultural expression of the protagonist’s “frozen youth,” touching upon the legacy of the American Dream,the fad of individualism and the complex of nostalgia.Firstly,Gatsby’s frozen youth underscores the prevalence of the American Dream,highlights the source of the ideal’s perpetual charm,and embodies the predicament encountered by the heirs of the American Dream in the Jazz Age.Secondly,the hero’s incapability and unwillingness to integrate into society represent the individualism prevalent in 1920 s American society.Thirdly,the protagonist’s frozen youth is a literary expression of the complex of nostalgia for a lost innocence in the Jazz Age.The lost innocence is both a precious quality of an individual and their prime time.Based on the analyses above,this chapter argues that Gatsby is an inheritor of the legacy of the American Dream,a practitioner of individualism,and a defender of lost innocence.The thesis concludes that since initiation is a recurring motif in American literature,a study of the eponymous hero’s frozen youth as portrayed in The Great Gatsby can contribute to a better understanding of the thwarted mental growth of American youth in the 1920 s.Furthermore,it is hoped that this study can offer some guidance to contemporary youth in terms of spiritual development.