F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of the greatest writers the United States has ever produced. The main reason for his fame are his two great novels, The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender is the Night (1934). These works are considered the milestones of modernist fiction, and through these, he paved the way for other writers.
He worked in a period when people were prospering, there were shifts in sexual mores, and consumerism was growing. To convey these ideas, he coined the term ‘Jazz-Age.’ Scot was an autobiographical writer, and he mixed it with general dilemmas, which gave him fame.
Through his initial short stories and later novels, he popularized a character which is known as ‘the flapper.’ This character remains inexorably associated with him. Though he made this character famous, he tried to change it in his later works because he didn’t want to be famous for being a ‘flapper novelist.’
He didn’t want to stay stuck in small issues; rather, he wanted to focus on broad cultural concerns. He wanted to research the reasons behind the sweeping changes that were replacing the old Victorian values. In his works, he has combined the impacts of Keats and Joseph Conrad.
He was against the monetary control of the nation by the few capitalists like Rockefeller, and this he portrayed in his fiction. In some of his works, his motive was to moralize society instead of satirizing it. He shows the reasons for moral depravity and their results, which cause great moral harm to society. He was greatly influenced by naturalist writers.
This is evident in some of his works where his intrusions are didactic, and the endings are didactic in the majority of the cases where the readers miss the factor of irony.
He is also famous for his ‘dual vision’ or ‘double perspective.’ He doesn’t only criticize the change in mores; rather, he expresses his empathy for the changing times. He doesn’t only sermonize and criticize by describing the ills; rather, he makes the reader experience what he wants to condemn.
Some of his critics suggest that his dramatis personae are caught by uncertainty. Through them, he conveys a world that is prone to plausible deniability and cynical expedience. From this, the reader gets a naïve picture of the titular hero. He through his work, The Great Gatsby achieves crowning because of the structural and stylistic conciseness.
Along with his fictional works, his non-fictional works are also of great importance. His work The Crack-Up ignited great controversy because of the confessions it made. He used short stories as commercial pieces to earn his livelihood. These short stories were different from his novels, which are considered his serious works. These are known for their wit and craft.
His short works show his skill in comedy, fantasy, and lighter works, a deviation from his melancholy elegiac works. This is a testament to the range of his talent. In short, his works cover a wide range of topics and the contemporary burning issues make great literature out of it.
A Short Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald
His Christian name was Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on 24th September 1896. His mother, Mary McQuillan, belonged to a wealthy Irish family while his father, Edward Fitzgerald, was from a middle-class family. His mother’s family had a grocery business, and from there, she inherited wealth, which was later used in raising her children.
His father tried his own business and worked as a salesman at Proctor and Gamble but didn’t succeed. His first decade of the job was shaky, and this affected much of his family. He shifted the residence between Minnesota and New York due to the financial issues.
When Scott was at the age of twelve, his father lost the job as a salesman. He had no other resources to sustain his family, and for this reason, he depended on his wife’s inheritance. He was a handsome boy, and for this reason, his parents preferred him much to other children. He was admitted to St. Paul Academy, and his first published piece of writing came when he was thirteen.
At the age of fifteen, he was admitted to Newman School, which was a prestigious preparatory Catholic school. There Sigourney Fay met him and recognized his talent.
He joined Princeton University, and there he focused on honing his career as a writer. There he wrote for different magazines and was an active member of the literary societies. This hampered his coursework, and soon he was dropped out. He joined the US Army soon after in 1917 and intended to join the war but couldn’t.
The war came to an end when his regiment was preparing to board for Europe. Before going there, he wrote a novel hastily because he feared he would die in war. This novel was rejected by the publisher.
He was discharged from the army as the war came to an end. He joined a lucrative job at an advertising business. He did so to convince his girlfriend Zelda to marry him, but upon her refusal, he left this job. After this, he came to St. Paul to write his novel. He married Zelda in 1920 after his first novel was published, and he achieved success.
He was a heavy drinker and often suffered from writers’ block. He completed his masterpiece work, The Great Gatsby in 1925 and published it soon. His financial and boozing issues continued till 1937, and then he resolved to get rid of it, leading a modest life. He achieved success, though not great before his death.
In the 1930s, Zelda suffered from a mental breakdown and couldn’t recover completely. This was one of the main reasons for his mental distress. In his last years, he worked as a screenwriter for Hollywood as a screenwriter. Along with that, he also worked as a freelance storywriter.
He was involved with Sheilah Graham there and rarely paid visits to Zelda and his daughter, Scottie. He tried to write his novel The Last Tycoon, but he couldn’t complete it and soon died in 1940 due to a heart attack.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Writing Style
Scott Fitzgerald was primarily a novel writer, and in these works, his tone is grim as compared to his lighter works, like short stories. His works contain a variety of literary features. These include the use of metaphors, conventional descriptions, witty and penetrating turns, flat paragraphs, bitter parody, etc.
The reader is startled by the carelessly undertaken writing, which soon turns out to be mature, poignant, and fine settings. He is aware of the sounds of talk, and this is reflected in his writing. He is aware of the beat and pitch. Sometimes his writing exhibits seemingly unimportant detail, which is used for the unconscious attunement.
His works line on the plane that is inferior to his best, and this can be seen in his two renowned novels and the short stories. He had natural stuff for pathos, but he didn’t completely utilize it, rather his focus remained on the romanzas and small happy, unhappy endings. He presents men and women not always naturally as they are; instead, he covers them in a film of glamour.
Some of his descriptions are superficial, and an example of it is the juveniles. He presents the spirit of the American world, which revolves around the American dream. It is the most realistic presentation in his works. Shortly, his style marks the transition of American literature from one age to another and has great impacts on the upcoming writers.
Moral
Scot suffered from moral problems throughout his life, and this he made one of the recurring motifs of his writing. His works use little slang and the talk, which may be better-called baby-talk. He has done so to appear serious to his readers, and this, as a result, reinforces the moral he wants to convey. There is a lack of facetiousness and obscurity of sentiment in his work, though it makes the greater part of his work unreadable.
His work, This Side of Paradise, is an example, and it remained a bestseller. His best-known novels The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night also remains important for an intelligent interest. These works give a picture of expatriate life.
His non-fictional work, The Crack-Up, is considered a funeral sermon and self-autopsy and an analysis of his life and works. It is an indictment of various aspects of American life. His critics write clearly about the moral aspect he presents in his works, and this is one of the indicational signs of his work.
Scott was an untypical case and had a respect for fate but was not a fatalist. He is considered by critics a writer who wrote like a ‘scapegoat,’ and it is evident from his work The Great Gatsby.
The Authority of Failure
He was a failure in real life, and that has impacts on his works, though he wasn’t a failure in his literary works. The Crack-Up is an example of the feelings he had about himself. In The Great Gatsby, he has dissociated the protagonist from himself and presented a sensible, intelligent, and responsible narrator.
He uses this technique of dissociation from Conrad and Henry James. This device makes the narrator a sympathetic observer who silently observes the happenings though there is development in the narrator’s general or moral perception.
His work, Tender is the Night, promises great scope but soon falls into the trap of failure which he faced. This novel backslides into the old ambiguities. There is the use of antithesis like love and money, money and youth, youth and fame, etc. Guilt is ambiguously treated in this novel.
The protagonist of the novel faces predicament due to the illness of his wife, which mirrors Scott’s married life. The protagonist of this work has a weak judgment, and for this reason, he is led to the downfall.
Theme and Texture
Scott’s work, The Great Gatsby, has been criticized for two things when it is not removed from the reminiscence of Jazz-Age or biography. There is a concern for moral seriousness and the language he employs. There is clarity, economy, and force in this work. This gives the novel richness and depth, adding to the density of the texture. Without depth and richness, the larger symbols would lose their meaning. Without these, the reader would feel the themes as intellectual and emotional messages.
An example is The Great Gatsby’s party scene where the glamour, charm, and grandeur comes to an end with the dismal return to the world of sober reality. His themes seem to be cynical and superficial comments. The texture of this novel implicitly presents the truth of life.
Test of Youth
Influenced by the prospering days of the American republic, Scott’s works carry the same theme. He monitored the trends in American society and made them a part of his fiction. He was aware of the wild youth (both boys and girls) and presented them in their works. For this reason, he is not accepted by many critics as a ‘serious’ writer.
Some of his characters in short stories are supremely youthful. These characters dance, drink, and enjoy life. They are left free to do what they want, and it seems that they don’t have parents. This is a test of their youth.
Though his works are filled with youthful heroes and heroines , his tragic results in the end. There are divorces, single parents, and other family issues shown, which are the result of the improper decisions taken by the free youth.
Crisis
In the last days of his literary career, Fitzgerald faced a great crisis, and that is evident in his Crack-Up, which was a collection of autobiographical pieces. These were a clear indication of the depression that he faced. It was considered by some critics as a ‘mental snapshot’ rather than being a ‘universal experience.’
Some of the readers believed that this work of him was a demonstration of a lack of courage in him. It was during this period when he twice attempted to commit suicide and wrote about despondency is this non-fictional work, which was considered by some scholars unfairly.
There is heroic self-awareness seen in this work. His cadence and self-disclosure are also noteworthy.
Projectionism
Fitzgerald is best known for first-hand experiences, and for this reason, he portrays images that are an exact projection of the object intended. He is considered a chronicler of his age because of the lively images that he portrayed. An example of it is his great work, The Great Gatsby, where the descriptions of parties, his past life, and other characters bring the lively images of the characters into the readers’ minds. This shows his great skill as a projectionist.
Another work which he didn’t complete, The Last Tycoon, is considered an ‘evocative social history.’ This work is a thinly disguised biography of Irving Thalberg. Other than the main character, there are other characters who are presented as round characters with complete descriptions.
Evolution of the American Dream
There are oppositions between his works and character. This is used by critics to explore the contradiction between the origins and later the fate of the American dream. This conflict has great impacts on the lives of the individuals, which are shown in his great works like The Great Gatsby, The Last Tycoon, Tender is the Night, etc.
Fitzgerald was himself the witness of the polarities of the American life. He saw himself the dream and nightmare, failure and success, illusion and disillusion, etc. These opposites related to the American dream are seen throughout his works.
These contradictions aren’t held in equilibrium. There is an increase in these as he proceeds to his last works. In his last and incomplete work, The Last Tycoon, he has changed this tendency where the stalemate between the two opposite ideas is broken. American dream becomes an integration of the urge of public and private pursuits of happiness in his works.
Modernist Hermeneutics
In his works, Fitzgerald has redefined symbols and the relevant phenomenon. He has changed the perception of paradise in his works, changing it into Princeton, which was the Eden of his shattered dreams. He has led to the emergence of a hermeneutic framework, which ranges from the biblical traditions to the American revolutionary period.
He has interpreted the twentieth-century world with social, national, and religious hermeneutics. These are used as systematic and architectural text. This idea of hermeneutics can be further extended to his religious affiliation, his atheism.
The American dream is the result of changes that took place from Puritanism to the American Renaissance. America was considered a promised land by many, and this idea is taken by Fitzgerald in his works. Though his atheism rejects the Kingdom of God instead, he takes refuge in a mythic kingdom. The image of paradise changes to the Ivy League campus.
This place is used as an alternative for the higher heaven, which can’t be achieved. This idealization of Princeton as paradise began when he was an undergraduate student there. His work, The Side of Paradise, is an evident example of it. His other work, The Spire and the Gargoyle, reinforces the idea that Princeton is a paradise while the rest of the world is a place of exile.