earticle

영어

Francis. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is commonly regarded as a critique of the American Dream. In this work, the author frequently depicts pastoral landscapes and garden-like, middle landscape settings. These descriptions contribute to the construction of a pastoral mode within the work and play a crucial role in suggesting the illusory nature of Gatsby’s dream and its inevitable downfall, along with that of American society more broadly. The pastoral scenery and rural spaces serve as substitutes for Gatsby’s nostalgia and idealized aspirations; they can be understood as correlatives in which both his obsessive pursuit of the dream and its fundamental unreality are reflected. The novel’s use of pastoral imagery and rural spatial configurations thus becomes central to the analysis of the nature and falsehood of Gatsby’s dream. Among the novel’s spatial backgrounds, the garden emerges as a liminal and pastoral setting. This space operates as a fantasy realm in which the main characters guise their true selves and merge reality with illusion. Within this realm, each character becomes further entranced by fantasy and increasingly fixated on personal desire. Ultimately, the novel’s middle landscapes— though initially conceived of as spaces through which dreams and desires might be realized—transform into sites of tragic downfall and narrative dissolution.