1. Introduction The Great Gatsby is the representative work of Scott Fitzgerald (1896- 1940), a famous American novelist in the 1920s. It tells readers the disillusionment of an American dream in a perfect artistic form. From the content point of view, this novel only tells the story of a "ungrateful spoony woman", but its appeal to readers is by no means limited to lovelorn. Between the lines of the novel, readers can feel a sense of distance, that is, all good things are a mirage, and the American dream is just a castle in the air. Based on the relevant theories of stylistics and the linguistic features of the novel, this paper discusses how The Great Gatsby achieves such a beautiful and sad stylistic effect. 2. The Application of Functional Linguistics in Fiction (Leech, Geoffrey) and Short, Michael) in their book Style in Fiction (198 1: 174) analyzed the novel style from three aspects according to the theory of functional linguistics: perspective, narrative order and description focus. These three aspects correspond to Halliday's three "meta-functions" of language-interpersonal function, textual function and conceptual function. Narrative angle refers to the narrator's attitude or view of narrative events in literary works. The author can narrate from the perspective of the first person "I", from the perspective of a character in the novel, or as a third party. In The Great Gatsby, the author created a character named Nick Callaway as the narrator of the whole story, and he participated in and witnessed the occurrence, process and ending of the story. This dual description angle widens the distance between readers and Gatsby's story, and invisibly creates a deep and resentful atmosphere for the whole novel. The following two paragraphs are taken from different description angles: (1) When I came back from the East last autumn, I felt that I hoped that the world would always wear uniforms and receive some moral attention; I don't want to have another trip to catch a glimpse of the human mind. Only Gatsby, the person who named this book, did not receive my reaction-Gatsby, who represented my undisguised contempt. If personality is a series of successful gestures, then there is something gorgeous in him, and he is highly sensitive to the promise of life, as if they are related to a machine that records earthquakes 10,000 miles away ... (P2-3, The Great Gatsby, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 1994)② I decided to call him. Miss Baker mentioned him at dinner, so it can be used as an introduction. But I didn't call him, because he suddenly hinted that he was willing to be alone-he stretched out his arms to the dark water in a strange way, and although I was far away from him, I was still worried that he was trembling ... (p34, ditto).