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The Real Secret Behind Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is one of the best-known American novels, but weirdly, and strangely reflective of Gatsby himself, one of the least understood. The much-awaited Baz Lurhmann version of The Great Gatsby opened in the United States in 2013, and like Gatsby himself—as a new trailer reminds us—the novel is “guarding secrets”.

《了不起的盖茨比》是最为知名的美国小说之一，可它对盖茨比本人的描写却十分古怪，这位小说主人公是人们最不了解的人物之一。巴兹·鲁尔曼导演倍受期待的新版电影《了不起的盖茨比》于2013年在美国上映，正如最新预告片提醒我们的那样，这部小说和盖茨比一样在“保守秘密。”

In the course of the novel, and no doubt the new film version, we find out what Gatsby is hiding: not only his criminal bootlegging, but also his family name, Gatz, and his poor, ethnic-American roots, which in the end exclude him from the upper-class Anglo-American social circles he hoped to enter. We understand his frustrated American dream, and we understand too why he felt the need to fabricate for himself the pedigree of a patrician family with the Anglo-sounding surname Gatsby.

在小说里，当然还有新版电影中，我们发现了盖茨比隐藏的事情：不光是非法贩卖私酒，还有他的姓氏“盖茨”和他贫穷的、少数族裔美国人的出身，他也因此在故事的最后被排除在他希望进入的英裔美国人上层社交圈之外。我们理解他破灭的美国梦，也理解他为什么要为自己编造一个贵族家庭的身世，外加一个英国味儿的姓氏：盖茨比。

We’ve all been taught the novel is about the disappearing American dream, but that’s only part of the story, the postwar part. The other part, the “back story” set during World War I, is about the American dream suddenly and dramatically on the rise: how Gatsby, this “Nobody from Nowhere,” as Daisy’s husband Tom calls him, gets to meet Anglo-American princess Daisy on equal terms, so she can fall in love with him. Tom will be “damned” if he sees how Gatsby “got within a mile of [Daisy] unless [he] brought groceries to the back door.”

我们都被教导这部小说是关于消失的美国梦的，但那只是故事的一部分，战后的部分。另一部分，即发生在一战期间的“前传”，则是关于美国梦突然而戏剧性地兴起：盖茨比，这个“不知出处的无名之辈”（戴茜的丈夫汤姆就是这样称呼他的），在同等地位下遇见了英裔美国人千金小姐戴茜，因

此她才爱上了他。如果汤姆看到盖茨比是如何“除了把杂货送到后门”还能“出现在戴茜周围一英里之内”的话，他会吃惊地骂娘的。

Of course, what got Gatsby in the front door of her house during the war was his officer status: “he went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor.”The novel makes clear how the war gave Gatsby a new social status when it made him an officer. He crossed the

“indiscernible barbed wire” between classes when he put on the “invisible cloak of his uniform.”

当然，盖茨比能够在战争期间站在戴茜家前门是因为他的军官身份：“他去了她家，最初是和泰勒营的其他军官一起去的。”小说清楚地揭示出，当战争让盖茨比成为一名军官时，它是如何使盖茨比获得新的社会地位的。当他披上“军装这件隐形斗蓬”时，他越过了阶级之间“看不见的铁丝网”。

What the novel doesn’t answer is how Gatsby, a poor farm boy from North Dakota and apparently a German-American to boot, got to be an officer in the US Army when Germany was the enemy. The novel definitely “guards secrets” on this point. Did Gatsby fool the army the way he fools most of the people in the novel about himself, with his

polished manner, his false name, and his invented family background? The novel’s narrator Nick Carraway naturally comes to doubt Gatsby’s account of a military commission that was supposed to have been issued out of a made-up upper-class background.

小说没有回答的问题是：盖茨比，这个北达科他州的农场穷小子，显然一个德裔美国人，是如何在与德国敌对的情况下，成为美国军队中的一名军官的。小说肯定在这一点上“保守了秘密”。盖茨比是否凭借他优雅的举止、虚假的姓名和凭空编造的家庭背景，用欺瞒小说中大多数人的方法，向军队欺瞒了自己的真实情况？小说叙述者尼克·卡拉韦很自然地对盖茨比的军事任命状产生了怀疑，觉得它可能是根据虚构的上层社会背景而颁发的。

Then how does Gatsby make officer? The novel gives two hints on the subject, which most critics have ignored and most readers, informed by the criticism, read right past. In fact, as a college professor, I’ve taught many students who think they remember the novel pretty well from high school but have forgotten that Gatsby was even a soldier.

那么盖茨比到底是怎么当上军官的？小说对此有两个暗示，但大多数评论家都忽视了它们，大多数读者接受评论的说法，也在阅读时错过了。其实，作为一名大学教授，我教过的很多学生自认为从高中时代起就对该小说烂熟于心，却忘记了盖茨比曾经是一名军人。

Nick eventually corrects Gatsby’s romantic saga of his promotion in the American Army, from lieutenant to major at the front as a result of his combat heroics, and notes, “He was a captain before he went to

the front.” That’s the first hint. The second is that Fitzgerald put Gatsby at Camp Taylor though it was at Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama that he met his future wife Zelda—for many critics, the obvious inspiration for Daisy.

尼克最终纠正了盖茨比在美国军队中步步高升（因在前线英勇作战而从中尉晋升为少校）的浪漫主义传奇；他还写道：“在去前线之前他是一名上尉。”这是第一个暗示。第二个暗示是：菲茨杰拉德把盖茨比安排在泰勒营，尽管这位作者是在阿拉巴马州蒙哥马利附近的谢里丹营遇到了他未来的妻子珊尔达——不少评论家认为，她显然就是戴茜这个人物的灵感源泉。