A Critical Exploration of American Culture Values in The Great Gatsby: A Tri-Dimensional Analysis and the Trajectory of Value Distortion

Abstract

 This thesis is an attempt to assess and apply the current research trends of the American culture values in the Great Gatsby. The rapid development of American capitalism in the Jazz age made the United States enter the modern society of industrialization. However, American people pursue the achievement of social value that has been abandoned, deviating from the original intention of the American dream early beliefs. It elaborately analyzes the literature called The Great Gatsby which embodies the profound study of American cultural values, aiming to further comprehend that the values play an essential role in people’s understanding and transformation of the world. This thesis analyzes the American culture values embodied by the Great Gatsby from three dimensions including individualistic value, material culture and social stratum culture, visually presenting the different levels of the positive and negative aspects of the mainstream American culture. It also objectively reappears the fact that the transition between old and new American culture values in the money-oriented society of the 1920s, showing the inevitability of the distortion of the American culture values.