Xiao Meng, Class 3, Senior 2, Shenzhen Foreign Languages School Instructed by Liu Xiaodong

深圳外国语学校高二（3）班 肖蒙 指导老师：刘晓冬

“The Great Gatsby” is one of the most typical works of modern U.S. novels. The author narrated the story with a third-person eye. The story disclosed the dark sides of the society and humanity at that time.

Gatsby, the hero of the story, was a self-made man. Although he was a bootlegger who ran some illegal business, he was an honest man and the most sincere person in the story. That forms a distinctive comparison. In order to earn enough money to marry Daisy, he went back on the laws.

As the saying goes: There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes. I always suspect Gatsby’s love toward Daisy. Maybe there is more obsessiveness in his emotion than love. He is an ambitious and determined man. To him, Don Cody’s yacht represents all the beauty and glamour. At that moment, he understands what kind of person he wants to be. So, in my opinion, Daisy is like the yacht which is included in his future plan. He is obsessed with Daisy because he believes money can buy everything which is also the essence of the American Dream that the author wants to criticize.

Jumping out of the story, we can find that this novel was derived from the author’s own experience. He wrote this novel when he finally got married with the woman he loved, who was also the prototype of Daisy. It is conceivable to think why he gave the story which reflected his own love story a bad end. What did he mean?

In my view, he may find that his wife was unrestrained and sophisticated, but just like Gatsby, his love was impulsive and reckless. Maybe he got tired of life but just couldn’t stop loving her, as he glorified Gatsby’s love in the story.

From the social background, we can see Gatsby also represents those people who believe the American Dream. They came to the United States pennilessly to chase money. And Gatsby is the typical example of their success. He gets all the money, power and glory. So his death satirizes their unreality and it also means the disillusion of the American Dream.