Scott Fitzgerald and the Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald, born on the 24th of Sept 1896, was one of the greatest writers, who was well-known for being a writer of his own time. He lived in a room covered with clocks and calendars while the years ticket away his own career followed the pattern of the nation with his first fiction blooming in 1920s. "His fictions did more then report on his time or on himself as a prototypical representative."
Scott Fitzgerald: (http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/fitzgeraldbio.html).He was known to be a romantic and a tragic figure as well as a brilliant writer who achieved success with his first novel, This Side of Paradise. He participated in the glamorous expatriate life in France in the 1920s and then received a series of professional and personals in the 1930s. It was the Fitzgerald legend that attracted lot of readers to his work, since he wrote four novels…...
mlaWorks Cited
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 24th Sept 1896-21 Dec 1940. Available at http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/fitzgeraldbio.html
Fitzgerald, Scott, F, The Great Gatsby, Sribner (Reprint Edition), 1st (June 1995)
F (rancis) Scott (Key) Fitzgerald (1896-1940),
Available at: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/fsfitzg.htm
illiam Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Doris Lessing
An author's writing style is like a voice or a fingerprint: unique to that individual and impossible to replicate. There is no such thing as a "better" or a "worse" writing style, although it is possible to prefer one writing style over another, just as one might prefer blue eyes over brown, or soft melodious voices over rough, gravelly-sounding ones. Three great authors who illustrate the fact that there is indeed no such thing as one best or preferable writing style are the American writers illiam Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the British writer Doris Lessing. I will compare and contrast those three writers' writing styles.
Many consider illiam Faulkner, as a writer, to be the best American stylist in the English language. He is, indeed, very good. Faulkner's style is often characterized by extremely long, detailed, compound-complex sentences that somehow still…...
mlaWorks Cited
Faulkner, William. "Barn Burning." The Harper American Literature, Volume 2,
2nd Ed. Donald Mc Quade et al. (Eds.). New York: Longman, 1993. 1137-
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "Winter Dreams. The Harper American Literature, Volume
2, 2nd Ed. Donald Mc Quade et al. (Eds.). New York: Longman, 1993. 1094-
doubt F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote one of the most captivating novels about the American Dream and the decaying American mentality when he penned the Great Gatsby. Julie Evans points out how the author seems to have become a victim of this kind of mentality with his work and his life, dying a "broken alcoholic" (Evans). Nevertheless, Fitzgerald should be remembered not for how he died but what he wrote -- a masterpiece that looks too squarely at the moral bankruptcy of an entire generation.
The truth about life is that it is not all good or bad. Evans realizes that as wonderful as Fitzgerald's writing is, it is not perfect and it does not make his life perfect. She looks at Fitzgerald's life through a realistic lens in this article, noting his failures and accomplishments. She points out that Fitzgerald achieved fame early in his career but it was the…...
mlaWork Cited
Evans, Julie. "An American Sublime." New Statesman (1996). 129.4501 (Aug. 28, 2000): p38. From Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 June 2011. http://go.galegroup.com/
inter Dreams" of F. Scott Fitzgerald and "Flowering Judas of Katherine Anne Porter"
Cool. Dispassionate. Masters of the art of literary artifice, lies, and characters who wear masks rather than their true selves. Although one author deploys an almost newspaper-like dispassionate style, and the other is more poetic in her use of the language, both F. Scott Fitzgerald and Katherine Anne Porter have been called by these appellations because of the ideological complexity of their characters, and the distanced literary ways in which the authors view these characters. Despite the fact that one might assume Dexter Green of "inter Dreams" is autobiographical, Fitzgerald narrates his character's striving for social success in America with a tone of cool objectivity. Although she herself traveled to Mexico, Katherine Anne Porter views her protagonist Laura's attempt to embrace a new ideology in Mexico with an equally skeptical eye.
In .J. Reeves essay, "Lies and Literature:…...
mlaWork Cited
Brantley, Will. "Katherine Anne Porter's Artistic Development: Primitivism, Traditionalism, and Totalitarianism." Winter 1995. Jounral of Studies in Short Fiction. [16 May 2005]
Fitzgerald, Scott. "Winter Dreams" Page updated 21 January 1998.
Copyright 1998, Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina. [16 May 2005]
Benjamin Button
F. Scott Fitzgerald is commonly thought of as one the 20th century's greatest writers and is best known for his reflections on the society of the 1920's; named the "Jazz Age" by Fitzgerald himself. But one of his short stories, published in Colliers magazine in 1922 was a purely fictional account of a remarkable man named Benjamin Button. In his The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fitzgerald examines a number of themes including a family's place in society, how individuals refuse to accept reality and live in a state of denial, and even a person's place within the family structure. But the theme that was presented repeatedly by Fitzgerald was the concept of age and how it affects a person's attitudes and relationships in the world.
Benjamin Button is remarkable in so much as he is born in 1860 as a 70-year-old man, and as time progresses forward, Benjamin ages…...
mlaReferences
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. (1922). The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Retrieved from http://www.readbookonline.net/read/690/10628/
Gatsby had built up this incredible illusion of what Daisy really was, and had gone off the deep end in throwing himself after her. einstein (p. 25) quotes from pages 102-103 of the novel:
"There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion." It is typical of Fitzgerald to use a phrase like "…the colossal vitality of his illusion," a very skillful way of saying the character Gatsby was stuck in a fantasy world, a naive place, and he believed that Daisy was something more than she really was. einstein believes that Fitzgerald is "committed to the project of making things from nothing" and in this case he made Daisy up to be more than she really was. Some writers would call that infatuation, or idealizing someone beyond their…...
mlaWorks Cited
Adams, James Truslow. The Epic of America. New York: Little, Brown, 1959 (reprint).
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. San Francisco: The Arion Press, 1984.
Giltrow, Janet, and Stouck, David. "Style as Politics in The Great Gatsby." Studies in the Novel
Vol. 29, 476-490.
e is so enraged by the way she died, with the driver not even stopping to try to help her, that he determines that God wants him to kill the driver. If this event had not happened, George would have known that murder for any reason was wrong. George, however, has been blinded by grief.
In the end, all the characters have demonstrated moral ambiguity. Gatsby has made his money bootlegging; Daisy uses men for what they can give her -- Tom, money and status, and Gatsby, adoration. Tom thinks it is his right to bully his way through the world. Both Daisy and Tom know that it is Daisy who hit and killed Myrtle, but both are quite willing to let Gatsby lie and say he was the driver. Jordan is a professional golfer who cheats at her game, and Nick knows this but falls for her anyway. Nick…...
mlaHermanson, Casie E. "Criticism," in Novels for Students, Vol. 2. New York: Gale, 1997.
Hermanson,
Samuels, Charles Thomas. "Essay," in Novels for Students, Vol. 2. New York: Gale, 1997.
Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a work that is timeless in its relevance because it questions whether the endless pursuit of wealth can ever really result in happiness and peace. In doing so, the novel is as pertinent to society today as it was when it was first written. In fact, even though the novel is situated in the 1920s, the characters, emotions, and situations are so true to life that the novel acts as a mirror for its readers to look into and reflect on the images that they see. Thus, Fitzgerald leads his readers into re-examining the very nature of humanity's search for Eden, which is usually motivated by a desire to seek material and emotional happiness. The belief that material and emotional happiness are correlated has led to humanity searching for an external Eden whereas, as Fitzgerald reveals in The Great Gatsby, this quest…...
mlaWorks Cited
Fitzgerald, Scott. F. "The Great Gatsby." New York: Scribner, 1995.
" (Fitzgerald, 61) Also, the way in which Charles checks himself when he starts bragging about his business in front on Lincoln reveals the same weariness and desperation: "Really extremely well,' he declared...'There's a lot of business there that isn't moving at all, but we're doing even better than ever. In fact, damn well...My income last year was bigger than it was when I had money. You see, the Czechs -- " (Fitzgerald, 63) the text thus revolves around the question of money and what it meant in the twenties. Fitzgerald's message comes from the way in which he pitches the economical matters against the spiritual ones. Charles now longs only for somebody to love, that is, his child, tired will all the excess of a wasted life: "He woke up feeling happy. The door of the world was open again. He made plans, vistas, futures for Honoria and himself,…...
mlaWorks Cited
Edenbaum, Robert I. 'Babylon Revisited': A Psychological Note on F. Scott Fitzgerald," in Literature and Psychology, Vol. 18, No. 1, 1968, pp. 27-9.
Fitzgerald, Francis Scott. "Babylon Revisited" in Collected Short Stories. New York: The Modern Library, 1975
Gallo, Rose Adrienne. "Fable to Fantasy: The Short Fiction," in F. Scott Fitzgerald, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1978, pp. 82-105
The 1920s: Era Overview." DISCovering U.S. History. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center - Gold. Gale. http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS .
Scott Fitzgerald Hollywood Years
The turning point in F. Scott Fitzgerald's life was when he met in 1918 Zelda Sayre, herself an aspiring writer, they married in 1920. In the same year appeared Fitzgerald's first novel, "This side of paradise," in which he used material from The Romantic Egoist. Its hero, Armory laine, studies in Princeton, serves in WWI in France. At the end of the story he finds that his own egoism has been the cause of his unhappiness. The book gained success that the Fitzgeralds celebrated energetically in parties. Zelda danced on people's dinner tables. Fitzgerald's debts started to grow, and Zelda discovered that she was pregnant - the baby was born in 1921.
The Fitzgeralds' finances were always shaky. Scott was forced to write short stories for the Post and other magazines, and decided that it would be financially advantageous for them to return to Europe in 1924. They…...
mlaBibliography
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Biographical Review, F. Scott Fitzgerald., Monarch Notes, 01-01-1963.
Author not available, F. SCOTT FITZGERALD., The Columbia Encyclopedia, Seventh Edition, 01-01-2002
Author not available, Last Page SOURCE: Jeff Gordinier: ENCORE THE DAY THE WRITING DIED NATHANAEL WEST AND F. SCOTT FITZGERALD BOTH DEPARTED 54 YEARS AGO, Entertainment Weekly, 12-23-1994, pp 84.
Brooks, Nigel, Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' and Glyn's 'Three Weeks.' (F. Scott Fitzgerald; Elinor Glyn). Vol. 54, The Explicator, 06-01-1996, pp 233(4)
"
Gradually, the essay begins to address Fitzgerald's specific mental problems. Fitzgerald makes clear that his sense of self-doubts and personal anxieties are of a long-standing nature. He discusses how his small stature in football made it impossible to realize his dreams of athletic glory. He also notes how his poor health and his lack of military service galled him because he never attained heroic stature in the eyes of the world. This sense of inadequacy permeates his life, and even after coming to terms with the limits of his body, Fitzgerald instead decided to embark upon a 'serious' literary career to prove his worth to the world.
Fitzgerald clearly continued to have a sense of doubt and foreboding about his fragile mental state. However, he attempted to quiet such doubts by repeatedly telling himself that: "Up to forty-nine it'll be all right." Even in this sense of morbidity about his future,…...
Scott Fitzgerald's character Dick Diver from "Tender is the Night" takes on characteristics of both Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway from "The Great Gatsby." Two sources. MLA.
Character Analysis of Dick Diver
Scott Fitzgerald was a mosaic of the characters he created. Fitzgerald, himself, can be found in Jay Gatsby, Nick Callaway, and Dick Diver. His own personal history reflects those he gave his characters, drinking habits, social status, and affluence (Brief pg). The life style of the 1920's in Paris is one that Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda experienced and is woven into his novel "Tender is the Night." Fitzgerald's stories often reveal the lives of the 'have's and 'have nots,' the lifestyle and near decadence of the rich compared to the common middle classes (Brief pg). Moreover, Fitzgerald always seems to distinguish between the 'old money' and the 'new,' the aristocrats and the nouveau rich. His writings reflect his awareness…...
mlaWorks Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Tender Is the Night. Simon and Schuster. 1995; pp 59.
Fitzgerald, Francis Scott. The Great Gatsby. Charles Scribner's Sons. 1925; pp
Brief Life of Fitzgerald." F. Scott Fitzgerald Centenary: University of South
Carolina. 11-25-http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/biography.html .(accessed
Fitzgerald wrote his novel during an era which clearly indicated that living in an unreasonable manner, making all sorts of abuses and excesses, recklessly without any kind of consideration has serious and in the same time damaging effects upon people's lives. Immediately after the First World War, the social and political climate reached an energetic climax during the roaring twenties. With a new focus on individualism and the pursuit of all sorts of pleasures and excitements, this period was filled with adventures that had serious negative consequences. The excess of pleasure and drinking which were the main causes that triggered the inevitable destruction of the characters in "Tender Is the Night" reflects Fitzgerald's sensitivity to the excesses of the Jazz Age prior to the Great Depression.
It could be said that in life we experience the phenomenon of rise and fall and that between the two of them there is equilibrium.…...
mlaBibliography
The Odyssey" by Homer, translated by Samuel Butler
http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html
Robin Mitchell-Boyask, Temple University - "Study Guide for Homer's Odyssey" (updated 31 January 2002)
Babylon Revisited, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a 1930 short story first published in 1931, free inside the Telegraph and on Saturday Evening Post. The short story saw a movie adaptation in 1954 titled The Last Time I Saw Paris. Set just a year after the 1929 stock market crash and the 'Jazz Age', some flashbacks within the story take place within the Jazz Age. The story references some instances of the Great Depression and how someone would have adapted their life in that era. In fact, the story is based on many of Fitzgerald's own experiences. For example, 'Scottie', his daughter is one of the people the story is based on along with his sister-in-law and husband. The story lends to the various feelings and thoughts of someone that feels and lives within an era of color and shadow. This essay is meant discusses such things through exploration…...
Gatsby will always be interpreted as an interloper, even though some people, like Nick, have enough ability to step outside of the culture, and express admiration for Gatsby's futile project of self-improvement, and Gatsby's desire to win Daisy by making money. The Balinese experience binds the participants "into a set of rules which at once contains them and allows them play" (Geertz 450). Some creativity and transgression is allowed within some limits, just as Carraway's socially and financial secure position allows him to show more affection towards Gatsby in his narrative. Gatsby's wealth and alcohol buy him some entry into the community that he would have lacked as a poor man. But despite this creativity of reinterpretation of social conventions, of both what Gatsby himself signifies and of Gatsby's own manipulation of cultural symbols, there are limits to how much a person can break the rules of the masculine…...
mlaWorks Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. The University of Adelaide Library. 2005.
25 Feb 2008. http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/f/fitzgerald/f_scott/gatsby/
Geertz, Clifford. "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight." Interpretive Social
Science. Editors Paul Rabinow & William Sullivan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
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