I couldn't see any flowers under my feet, or the flowers hanging on the branches, but, in the warm night, I could guess every fragrance of the season, which should have flowers of vanilla, shrubs, and wild fruit trees.
- Keats, "Ode to the Nightingale"
For Fitzgerald, the famous writer, people are more familiar with his work "The Great Gatsby", but there is not much understanding of his other famous work "Night Gentle", but when studying Fitzgerald, "Night Gentleness" exists as an important work and is famous in the world.
Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald's life is closely related to the "jazz age" in the United States, and the works he creates are also closely related to the background of his time.
This "Gentle Night" is also known as fitzgerald's 5 novels, the most difficult to evaluate, and the most expressive novel. In later people's interpretations, the novel "Gentle Night" is even called psychological novel, jazz novel, social novel and so on.
All this makes people pay more attention to this work, and have a deeper understanding and interpretation of the value and psychedelicity behind it.
The life of the protagonist Dick unfolds in the work "Gentle night".
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the awakening and dream between dreams and reality</h1>
In terms of name, the night is gentle, and it is named from the poet Keats's "Ode to the Nightingale", but there is no description of poetic romantic colors, and even more realistic and more social.
In this work, Fitzgerald does not portray the romantic dreams of young Dick as in "The Great Gatsby", nor does he have any themes to pursue his old dreams.
Instead, after his own dreams are shattered, there is an awakening, and this awakening does not come from those bystanders, but from the gains and losses, successes and failures that the protagonist Dick himself has realized in his life.
As a young man, Dick believed that human nature is good, and his dream was to be a brilliant psychologist, and his father taught Dick from an early age to be kind and to exist as valuable qualities such as conscience, honor, and courtesy. His father's education made Dick also have this kind nature.
Dreams and futures in contradictions
It is also because of this nature that the protagonist Dick cannot avoid Nikkor, as an excellent psychologist, the protagonist Dick knows that Nikkor's attachment to him is a typical empathy phenomenon for psychopaths, only existing as a recipient, not a real normal love.
He knew that as a counsellor, he himself was in the process only used as a tool to relieve the problems of the mind, not as a real individual.
But in the process of contact, Nikkor's childlike laughter made Dick make his real choice, and also because of his excellent sense of responsibility, Dick himself rejected Rosemary's courtship. But on the contrary, these signs of kindness made Rosemary fall in love with him even more.
However, this search for reason is still unable to truly grasp his own emotions, and when he hears others talk about rosemary's scandal, his heart is still painful.
Then, because of the death of the protagonist Dick's father and Nickel's suspiciousness, Dick gradually entered a crazy situation and gradually developed the habit of loving to drink.
At this time, the protagonist Dick has a huge sense of confusion about his life, and he is also extremely disappointed in himself, thinking that he will not bring happiness to anyone like the plague.
On the one hand, he can't propose to Rosemary, on the other hand, he is also inferior to Nickell in the competition, and for Nichol and Tommy's private affair, Dick himself is extremely calm, this calm, not helpless, but Dick's true reflection in the face of reality.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the satire of society and the exposure of reality by alcoholics</h1>
Among the people surrounding Dick, there are contradictions everywhere. Like these incest tragedies and feelings that cannot be recognized by society.
Under the gentle night, what is presented is not the beauty of human nature, but more of the most vulnerable aspects of human nature.
These aspects make Dick hugely suspicious of human nature.
Dick, who longs for love, on the one hand, has been immersed in Nickell's love, on the other hand, the lack of results with Rosemary, but also make Dick unable to resist this strong temptation, as a psychologist, he cares for Nickel through a sense of rational responsibility, but found that these people around him, in the past 8 years, still around the money to produce a scene of human tragedy.
Dick is still pursuing this beauty, eager to be affirmed by others, and Dick is also in the process of this pursuit, gradually losing his direction.
The contradiction between the loser and the good guy
In the evaluation of the protagonist Dick, it is generally believed that he is the individual who sacrificed in the pursuit of money in the rich Warren family. The image of a complete loser in society and the family.
Dick walks out of his house and wanders through the small towns of america with his unfulfilled ideals, but if you look closely, you will find that Dick is not a complete loser, but more of a good man.
Just like his help to Mrs. Caroline, and even to tomy's calm attitude towards his wife, it is not a typical loser image. If said the image of his failure.
He can only exist as a loser in the aspect of alcoholism, but as Mary said, Dick's honesty after drinking is presented in a form of irony. For the rich in the intoxication of money, only alcoholics dare to make bold disclosures.
Although Dick himself is sponsored by the Warren family to serve the rich, in the process Dick's drinking is more as a way for him to vent and escape from real life, and Dick's real words and deeds after drinking alcohol are his exposure and rebellion against this real world.
Dick's state of leaving his town in the life of the extravagant rich is presented as a strong contrast, and although he has left the past behind, he has resumed this luxurious life.
But it made Dick correct the direction of his life on another side, and returned to his words and deeds and work as a doctor.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > autobiographical writing and the disillusionment of the American Dream</h1>
In this work, Dick's self-reflection and intense re-search for lost faith are presented morally as central images among a group of Americans bewildered by money and wine.
Moreover, the life experience presented by the protagonist Dick also has a lot in common with the author Fitzgerald himself, for example, Dick is from a humble background, but his father is an Episcopal priest, his family background and moral education, the author's life is basically similar, and Dick has also received a good higher education, juvenile devotion, etc., are similar to the author, and even many weaknesses and deficiencies presented in personality are very similar to Fitzgerald. During Fitzgerald's 9 years of writing, Fisgerald mastered exactly how to make this work truly present a different landscape.
In this society where money worship prevails, the sincere and kind nature of man and the pursuit of lofty ideals have formed a huge contradiction with the hedonistic outlook on life and the reality of moral degeneration.
The truth of money worship
The protagonist Dick appears as a loser in life after this change of events, and has suffered a total and complete failure in career, life, love and marriage, and even in spiritual values.
This failure itself is not something that psychologists like Dick can solve, nor is it a value crisis that can truly save humanity, but more importantly, in the context of this world that has been eroded by disease, it is impossible to truly find the true meaning of life.
Dick wants to break the ultimate dream world of healing and find his true value in the spiritual world, but reality ultimately makes this end a truly outright failure. Dick's kindness and innocence to society become a huge blow to him by society as a whole, just as he saved Nichol, but Nichol betrayed Dick to marry Tommy when he was able to live independently.
Dick's dreams eventually turned into painful memories and reflections. The fundamental reason for man's tragic fate lies in the great wealth it possesses, just as Nikkor's father, Mr. Warren, as a typical image of a rich American man, believes that everything can be bought with money, and that Dick's feelings for Nikkor are only for money reasons.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the pathology of money worship and the disillusionment of dreams</h1>
Every rich man in high society has his own illness, which is nothing more than narrow-mindedness, alcoholism without ambition, exposure and so on.
In this work, Dick also slowly degenerates from an idealist to another extreme.
This extreme is like his ending, sacrificing himself in exchange for Nikkor's new life, and while Nikkor and Tommy are happily snuggled on the beach, he returns to the nameless town as a loser and lives an ordinary life.
His life was like a great satire on the goal of the American ideal, and his ending made people aware of the hypocrisy of this future. The disillusionment of this dream, like the final fall of Gatsby in his other work, The Great Gatsby, the inevitable fate of the end of the era finally turns the background of this era gray.
This gray makes people crazy and helpless, and in the face of this gray, no matter how gentle the night is, it cannot change the cruel state. The disillusionment of faith and the aimlessness of life are deeply exposed, and all emotions in the face of money seem to become less important.
The ultimate foothold of the American Dream became a complete worship of money.