Elegy of the Great Age: Gatsby and the Roaring Twenties

In the 1920s, shortly after the end of the First World War, the newly-born United States welcomed its own era for the first time with a strong victor attitude, and the technology, industry, business, art, education and culture were unprecedentedly prosperous. In this decade, the Republican Coolidge was elected president with the campaign slogan "Order and Prosperity" and was re-elected. Soon after taking office, he said that "the top priority for Americans is to do business"; this decade, Chicago gang leader Al Capone Relying on his Prohibition-era bootleg business, he made a fortune and turned his hands around the Midwest, almost ten years before he was imprisoned in San Francisco's Alcatraz prison in 1931; this In ten years, the famous Chaplin released the films "The Circus" and "The Gold Rush", without having to wait many years later today, he has undoubtedly become synonymous with silent film at that time; this decade, Charles Lindbergh piloted the single-engine "Spirit of St. Louis" across the Atlantic from New York to Paris, an incredible realization of the human dream of leaping across the ocean in the industrial age. When he landed in Paris, there were 150,000 Parisians eagerly waiting for him at the airport; this decade, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in the name of morality, declared a nationwide ban on alcohol. This morality legislation is meaningless This backfired only with endless gangster bootlegging business, ubiquitous illegal bars and full-scale corruption in the local justice system; this decade saw the birth of the first commercial radio station in history, KDKA, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and jazz became the era of The most powerful voice, jazz masters like Louis Armstrong have come out in large numbers; this decade, Henry Ford sold 15 million Ford Model T cars, and Standard Oil, which was split up 10 years ago, has once again established countless independent companies across the country. The gas station, Dow Chemical has its own trademark and has become one of the few large chemical companies in the United States.

A decade of mad roaring maddening and dashing for everyone, and many years later, the greatest and most self-fulfilling prophecy summed up was Fitzgerald's dirge-like novel The Great Gatsby. Even today, nearly a hundred years later, it is still brought to the screen by the director. The film is full of extravagant luxury: costumes, jewelry, sets, banquets, and even Gatsby's gleaming yellow sports car, all reminding audiences of the jazz age of frenzied pleasure. Maybe Fitzgerald himself didn't realize it, but all the later people saw the arrival of the inevitable Great Depression and disillusionment in the prophecy version from the descriptions of the drunken and feasting, and even today, people are also emotional.

If it were just a harbinger of doom seen in everyone's carnival, the film's original couldn't have been so far-reaching, because it was designed to ask the question: "What the hell is the American Dream?" Leon Gatsby, the protagonist played by Nado DiCaprio, undoubtedly represents the most direct spiritual appeal of that era: I will continue to work hard to earn more money, gain a higher status, and get as fast as possible through my own efforts. From a nobody to someone. Then take everything you have to go back to the past, to recover everything that you couldn't get back then. All the dances, feasts, bands, wine, and hustle and bustle in his mansion are to recover everything that was lost in Louisville five years ago, not only Daisy, but also all the five years of future that he thought he had lost, Those supposed five years of happiness that never even happened. Time had better stand still for the obsessive, almost paranoid Gatsby: the five years never happened, he came back to Daisy with his fortune-achieving status, and started all over again from five years ago, as for Now that Daisy and Tom had a daughter, Gatsby never even cared or even thought about what to do. He is so obsessed with his past that he refuses to let go that when Nick intuitively asks, "You can't repeat what happened in the past," Gatsby replies with skepticism: "It's impossible to repeat the past? Why? ? Of course! I'll get everything back to the way it should be! She'll see!" In his world, it's all about the green light that shines at night at Daisy's residence across the water from his mansion.

In fact, Daisy's superficial indecision is not even worth talking about, because she and Tom are such people who grew up in such an environment. Even Daisy herself couldn't be unaware of her situation and Tom's affair, she looked at herself and Tom's daughter and said "I'm happy to be a daughter, I hope she's a fool. To a girl The best thing in the world, for a child, is to be a beautiful little fool." His thought and material desire for taking all the material possessions he has for granted makes him essentially no different from Tom. As Nick said of Tom and Daisy's indifferent indifference after Gatsby's death: "I couldn't forgive him or like him. But everything he did made sense to them: everything was so indifferent People are confused. Tom and Daisy are cold people who screw everything up and back down into their wealth and insensitivity or whatever brings them together, leaving the mess for someone else to clean up."

Statements such as "Gatsby fell in love with a bitch and ruined his life" are also very debatable. Gatsby is like a pony brother, "I have endured for three years, just waiting for an opportunity, I want to fight, I don't want to prove that I am great, I want to tell people: I must take what I lost. After all, the perseverance oath of "coming back" is moving, but if a person does not let go of all the things he has experienced, no matter how great Gatsby's later achievements are, if his success and self-realization will be restored by opening the scars of the past If Daisy, who no longer belongs to him, proves it, what is destined in front of him can only be a dead end. Because what happened in the past really happened so inexcusably, the only option other than acceptance is to forget. The sad thing about Gatsby is that he can't do either.

Gatsby used all his efforts to create a new self and realize the American dream, and he even changed his name himself. His hidden implication for Daisy is that he refuses to believe that just because he comes from humble beginnings is doomed to nothing. Any method that allows one to obtain wealth and achievement, even if it is illegal, is at all costs. At Gatsby's funeral, only Nick, Gatsby's father, and the pastor appeared, and almost everyone stayed away, for fear of having anything to do with this Mr. Gatsby, who started by selling bootleg alcohol and organized crime, even if it didn't take long. Before they all drank and danced all night in Gatsby's mansion. People celebrate wealth and achievement but, without exception, shy away from the aftermath. "I'm so proud of my son's achievements," Gatsby's father told Nick in Gatsby's stately mansion, who came to his funeral after learning of his death.

Returning to the original question: "What is the American Dream?" In a speech entitled "Citizens of the Republic" delivered by President Roosevelt in Paris in 1910, he said: "It is never those who point fingers, Not those who judge others' failures, much less blame others for how they could have done better. Glory goes to those who really stand in the arena: dusty, sweat and blood; ; they make mistakes and fall over and over again, because there must be blows along the way, but they keep going; they understand their persistence and focus; they devote themselves to noble causes; at best, they end up Tasted great victories and accomplishments; in the worst case, even if they failed, at least they fell great, because those indifferent and timid souls who never knew victory or defeat from beginning to end were far from being on a par with them ". For more than two hundred years, generations of immigrants have come here to escape the old world of the past. Passing by the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and on the Port of Long Beach in Los Angeles, all the people who come to live here believe that no matter how poor and lowly they come from, as long as they rely on their hard work and unremitting pursuit, One day we will always get everything we feel we deserve: wealth, status, respect, love. Everyone who lives here, like Gatsby, "believes in that green light, that perfect future that fades away from us year by year. We couldn't catch him before, but it doesn't matter: tomorrow we'll run faster. , stretched our hands farther, and there was always that morning when we struggled forward, sailing against the current, constantly being pushed into the past.”

As the original text of the first chapter of the novel said, "Gatsby himself was actually safe and sound in the end, but it was only the muddy dust found after waking up from the dream that devoured Gatsby, so that we temporarily have no ambitions in the world. The sadness of the reward and the fleeting joy have lost interest". . Gatsby is indeed great and amazing, but he should have been extra careful to figure out what it is that he has been pursuing day and night tirelessly.

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