Nick Carraway: A Reliable and Unreliable Narrator in The Great Gatsby 尼克·卡罗维：《了不起的盖茨比》中一个既可靠又不可靠的叙事者文献综述

 2023-05-06 09:52:29

文献综述

1.Introduction1.1 Research backgroundF. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) is a famous American novelist in the 1920s. As a young man, he wrote plays for his own school theater and for school journals. Later, he dropped out of school due to poor health. After retiring from the army, he continued to write as a part-time writer and became famous after publishing his novel Heaven on Earth in 1920. Fitzgerald is the representative of the pursuit of excitement and hedonism after the First World War. His works vividly reflect the disillusionment of the American Dream in the 1920s and the wasteland zeitgeist of the American upper class during the Great Depression. The publication of The Great Gatsby in 1925 cements his place in modern American literature, making him a spokesman for the Jazz Age of the 1920s and one of the representatives of the Lost Generation. The Great Gatsby is regarded as an American classic of that time. The novel unfolds from Nicks perspective, telling the tragic fate of his neighbor Gatsby, who believes that he can obtain wealth and happiness through personal struggle. While serving in the army, Gatsby falls in love with Daisy, a wealthy upper-class woman. But his family status is unlikely to be accepted by Daisys family. After they separate, Daisy marries Tom. After years of hard work, Gatsby succeeds. He keeps throwing parties at his mansion, luring Daisy and regaining her. But after running over Toms mistress with her car, Daisy flees with her husband without hesitation. The dead womans husband mistakes Gatsby for the murderer and kills him. This novel is a record of the Jazz Age, which has profound social value. From the micro perspective, Gatsby has four times of disillusionment altogether. From the macro perspective, Gatsbys death symbolizes the disillusionment of the American Dream in the Jazz Age. Aside from the theme, The Great Gatsby is noted for its rich writing techniques such as symbols, irony, and multiple narrative perspectives in narration. This subverts the spatial and temporal narrative modes of traditional novels, and makes the plot characteristic of ups and downs. This novel has new ideas in both material selection and writing skills, which is worth studying.The first person narrative perspective is a prominent feature of the novel. The first person narration is also known as 'subjective narrative perspective', that is, the author starts the narration from the perspective of 'I' and directly tells the readers what he sees, hears and feels. It is helpful to express the authors thoughts and feelings and to describe his inner activities, thus enhancing the authenticity of the story. However, due to the limited vision, emotional involvement and other factors, the narrative turns out to be unrealistic, which leads to both reliability and unreliability of the narrator. 1.2 Literature reviewThere are many discussions on The Great Gatsby at home and abroad, but most focus on the themes, such as man and nature, Gatsbys tragic fate and Nicks self-exploration. Of course, the most studied topic is the American Dream.Wu (2016) analyzes the conflict between human and nature in The Great Gatsby from the perspective of natural ecologism, pointing out that peoples greed does great harm to the environment. Li (2021) starts from the acceleration of economic development and urbanization, and proposes that modern people should pay attention to their own internal development. She focuses on the relationship between 'self' and 'other' in The Great Gatsby, and explores the construction and transcendence of 'self' by 'other'. Cain (2020) states that The Great Gatsby gives a vivid depiction of income inequality as the fortunate few in the 1920s achieve the American Dream. In terms of writing techniques, Yang (2019) points out the symbolic meanings of the tea reception in the fifth chapter of The Great Gatsby. The change of weather conditions before and after the tea reception represents the change of the characters inner emotion, and the tea itself also symbolizes Daisy in Gatsbys mind. When it comes to the theory of narratology, most people study the novel from the perspective of narrative person, narrative time or narrative space. Wang (2014) interprets that the first person narrative can fully highlight the authenticity of the story. Nick is a special narrator. As a friend of Gatsby, he has similar values with Gatsby; as a neighbor, he is a neutral bystander, which enables him to be a life-like character and narrator. However, few scholars have analyzed the narrative reliability or unreliability of the narrator Nick. For instance, Yu (2014) discusses the influence of Nick as an unreliable narrator on the characters, which helps us have a new understanding of Nicks role in the novel. But he ignores Nicks dual identity. In this sense, the narrator Nick is not only a participant but also an observer. His account may deviate from objective facts. Thus, the reliability of Nicks narration is not invariable. Also, there is still a big gap in the research of Nicks narrative reliability. As few scholars have discussed Nicks reliability and unreliability as a narrator, this thesis aims to interpret him from the perspective of first person narration and explore why he is both a reliable and unreliable narrator. 1.3 Need of the study This thesis will focus on Fitzgeralds first person narrative novel The Great Gatsby, and explore the reasons for narrative reliability and unreliability of Nick as a narrator. Theoretically, the study of Nicks narrative dual identity can provide a convincing example for the interpretation of other narrative novels. The first person narrative perspective can shorten the distance with readers and therefore facilitate the author to express his feelings and make the story more vivid. By grasping the narrators narrative strategy of swinging between reliability and unreliability, we can obtain an effective way to understand Fitzgeralds 'fuzzy art' from the perspective of narratology. Practically, although its disillusionment is commonplace, we are still vague about what the American Dream is. As Nick is both a participant and narrator of the story, his account can offer us an access to the Jazz Age and the Lost Generation of the 1920s and deepen our understanding of the American Dream.2.The theory on the first person narration This section will give a more detailed overview of the first person narration, including its definition, classification of narrative reliability and unreliability, functions, and significance. 2.1DefinitionThe first person narration is one of the narrative techniques. It refers to the fact that the author narrates from the perspective of the first person, that is, 'I', and directly narrates to the reader what he sees, hears, experiences and feels. There are two situations. First, 'I' is the author, which mostly appears in diaries, travel notes, letters and autobiographical articles. As a narrator, he claims that the author coincides with the narrator, and the whole content of the story is narrated from the perspective of 'I'. Second, 'I' is not the author himself, but a major or secondary character in literary works. Claiming to be a character in the story, the narrator coincides with the characters. This 'I' has the characteristics of action, language, psychology and personality. 'I', who claims to be a character, can be the main character or a secondary character.2.2 Classification Narrative theory has many classifications. For example, in terms of time, it can be divided into traditional narrative theory and modern narrative theory; from the narrative perspective, it can be divided into omniscient perspective, internal perspective and external perspective. Since this paper mainly discusses the narrative reliability and unreliability, this section only introduces this classification. 2.2.1 Narrative unreliabilityNarrative unreliability refers to the implied author and the narrator have inconsistent or even opposite value orientation. Booth (1961) first puts forward the concept of 'narrative unreliability' in his book The rhetoric of fiction. In Booths view, the standard to measure narrative reliability and unreliability lies in the 'distance' between the narrator and the implied authors narrative norms. He defines that the narrator is reliable when his ideological norm or behavior is close to the implied authors, otherwise, the narrator is unreliable. The implied author is not the real author, but the personality or consciousness embodied by the real author in the narration. In other words, the implied author is the 'second self' of the real author. Narrators often appear unreliable when they tell stories and portray themselves as protagonists. For example, the narration of Stevens, the protagonist and narrator of the novel The Remains of the Day written by Japanese writer Kazuo Ishiguro, is vague and contradictory. This is typical of narrative unreliability used by the author to stimulate the dramatic conflict and resonate with the readers. In addition, the first person narrator lacks the knowledge to tell an accurate story and even cannot have omniscient knowledge of the events, so he merely provides the narration of the events he knows. This inevitably leads to narrative unreliability.Narrative unreliability has the following advantages. First, it makes the narrator and other characters more vivid and lifelike. For instance, in the novel The Remains of the Day, the same event is narrated by several unreliable narrators whose narration, therefore, reveals Stevens characteristics like vanity and self-deception. Second, it helps the author to hide his writing intention and diversify the themes he intends to convey, which can demonstrate uniquely aesthetic construction as Guo (2012) advocates. Third, it may attract readers interest and enhance their interaction with the literary works, thus stimulating their keen interest and further thinking.2.2.2 Narrative reliability Narrative reliability is put forward by Booth in The rhetoric of fiction (1961) as a narrative type opposite to narrative unreliability, and refers to the fact that implied author and the narrator have the same value orientation. In short, it means that the narrator appears frequently and makes comments consistent with the overall values of the work. When the narrator can narrate a thing calmly, objectively and rationally, we believe that his narration is reliable and can accord with the implied authors values. In addition, the false third person perspective gives the narrator the opportunity to make many comments. From these comments, readers can understand the narrator and find the implied authors value judgment that they may compare with the real authors. Similarly, narrative reliability has its advantages. First, it can fully portray a convincing narrator, whose narration shows consistency and can therefore make the story coherently reasonable. Second, it enables the author to show his writing intention at a deeper level. For example, Chen (2018) analyzes the narrator in the novel Post Master. The reliable narration highlights the author Pushkins satire and criticism of the society and bureaucratic system of his time. Third, as the narration is fixed and carried out from the perspective of a participator of the story so that readers can have little reading difficulties.2.3 Functions and significanceAs a common narrative technique in novels, the first person narration has many functions. First, it makes the psychological description of the characters more delicate. The author is not from the perspective of an indifferent bystander, but from the perspective that is close to real life, which therefore creates a strong atmosphere of readability.Second, the author uses the perspective of 'I' to narrate the story so that its plot tends to be miscellaneous and vivid but not chaotic. In particular, when using the first person perspective to describe other peoples biographical events, it can provide more comprehensive narration and evaluation. Third, it enables readers to empathize with what the author wants to express. The perspective of the first person narration can show 'my' inner world thoroughly and realistically. It seems that not only the author is 'I', but also the reader becomes 'I', thus narrowing down the distance between the author and the reader. Readers can experience the plot personally and authentically.ReferencesBal, M. (1985). Narratology: Introduction to the theory of narrative. 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