By Keith Gandal

T he 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”.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.

《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。”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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。

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。……