During the 1920s, an era emerged known as the Jazz Age, which was coined by a remarkable novelist, F. Scott Fitzgerald, symbolizing free spirited individuals with economic prosperity, love, and an abundance amount of carouse. Throughout his life, Fitzgerald strived to be wealthy in order to marry the woman of his dreams, Zelda Sayre, who later experienced a mental breakdown where she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Although being an extraordinary writer, he encountered innumerable tragedies, such as an alcohol addiction, his wife’s mental illness and death, and the hardships he went through dealing with depression. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. Born from an Irish-American …show more content…
Paul to pursue his goal in rewriting his famous novel, This Side of Paradise. Later during that year, he began his career as a writer where he created popular, profit making, fiction novels and short stories. The Saturday Evening Post Newspaper and The Smart Set Magazine was where Fitzgerald would write inspiring stories about young love, and independent young women. When This Side of Paradise was published on March 26, 1920, it had almost made Fitzgerald famous overnight causing him to finally win over Zelda Sayre’s hand in marriage. Together they commenced an unforgettable, lavishing life as a young prominence couple. The Great Gatsby, one of his famous works, was about a young man pursuing his dream to attract the girl of his dreams. The miraculous novels and short stories he wrote are known to be inspired by his own life and experiences. Even though, Fitzgerald and Zelda were living an extravagant lifestyle, they experienced numerous devastating moments. Fitzgerald was going through severe alcoholism while Zelda had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Unfortunately, the novel that he struggled on for years, Tender Is the Night, which was about a psychiatrist destroyed by his wealthy wife, resulted in tepid feedback and poor
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota, to Edward Fitzgerald and Mary McQuillan. Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre when he was stationed near Montgomery, Alabama. Zelda was eighteen at the time and was the daughter of Judge Anthony Dickinson Sayre and Minnie Machen Sayre. Fitzgerald later married Zelda Sayre on April 3, 1920 (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” American). They had one child together and named her Frances Scott (“Francis”). When Fitzgerald was forty-four years old he died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940, in Hollywood, California (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” St. James).
He was raised in the upper-crest Summit Ave. neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota, but he was the poorest boy in his neighborhood and at his private school. When Fitzgerald proposed to Zelda, she declined until he was financially stable to maintain her lifestyle. Zelda personifies the love interests of F. Scott Fitzgerald novels, such as Daisy, The Great Gatsby, and Judy Jones, Winter Dreams.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota. There, he attended Saint Paul Academy, where his passion for writing began. At thirteen, he completed his first story, which was published in the Academy’s newspaper. Later, Fitzgerald moved to New Jersey and attended the Newman school for two years from 1911 to 1913. Fitzgerald went on to attend Princeton University; there he wrote scripts and lyrics for the musicals performed at the University.
The characters Fitzgerald created in both The Great Gatsby and “Winter Dreams” reveal the age in which he lived in and did very well to define the time period. In this way that Fitzgerald is regarded as a historian in the era. After World War I, American society went through a period of intense change. Traditional principles in God, country, and civilization were traumatized as Americans confronted the anguish of a war of that degree. During the 1920s, many Americans acknowledged that an old order had been substituted by a new, open society, one that embraced new fashions of clothing, behavior, and even the arts. Fitzgerald coined the name ‘‘Jazz Age’’ to describe this decade, which along with the ‘‘Roaring Twenties’’ came to express the Cultural Revolution that was then taking place at the time.
Fitzgerald was gaining notoriety. It was said to be a representation of the free lifestyle and relaxed morals of what became known as the "Lost Generation.” This couple “personified the immense lure of the East, of young fame, of dissolution and early death.” (Milford, 2011, p. 6) She was said to be his muse, but there was also talk that he plagiarized much of his writing from her journals. In addition, to inspiring his major heroines, she supplied him with many other memorable lines. “Much has been written on Zelda Fitzgerald as F. Scott Fitzgerald's muse and as a victim of mental illness.” (Grogan, 2015, p.110) Zelda was considered an embodiment of the Jazz Age (1920-1929), and had a very tumultuous, substance abuse filled life with Mr.
Certain authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, wanted to reflect the horrors that the world had experienced not a decade ago. In 1914, one of the most destructive and pointless wars in history plagued the world: World War I. This war destroyed a whole generation of young men, something one would refer to as the “Lost Generation”. Modernism was a time that allowed the barbarity of the war to simmer down and eventually, disappear altogether. One such author that thrived in this period was F. Scott Fitzgerald, a young poet and author who considered himself the best of his time. One could say that this self-absorption was what fueled his drive to be the most famous modernist the world had seen. As The New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean mentions in her literary summary of Fitzgerald’s works, “I didn’t know till fifteen that there was anyone in the world except me, and it cost me plenty” (Orlean xi). One of the key factors that influenced and shaped Fitzgerald’s writing was World War I, with one of his most famous novels, This Side Of Paradise, being published directly after the war in 1920. Yet his most famous writing was the book, The Great Gatsby, a novel about striving to achieve the American dream, except finding out when succeeding that this dream was not a desire at all. Fitzgerald himself lived a life full of partying and traveling the world. According to the Norton Anthology of American Literature, “In the 1920’s and 1930’s F. Scott Fitzgerald was equally equally famous as a writer and as a celebrity author whose lifestyle seemed to symbolize the two decades; in the 1920’s he stood for all-night partying, drinking, and the pursuit of pleasure while in the 1930’s he stood for the gloomy aftermath of excess” (Baym 2124). A fur...
Dubbed the ‘roaring 20s’, because of the massive rise in America’s economy, this social and historical context is widely remembered for its impressive parties and sensationalist attitude. However, Fitzgerald also conveys a more sinister side to this culture through numerous affairs, poverty and a rampage of organised crime. By exposing this moral downfall, Fitzgerald reveals to the responder his value of the American dream and his belief of its decline. As a writer, Fitzgerald was always very much concerned with the present times, consequently, his writing style and plot reflects his own experiences of this era. So similar were the lives of Fitzgerald’s characters to his own that he once commented, “sometimes I don't know whether Zelda (his wife) and I are real or whether we are characters in one of my novels”. In 1924, Fitzgerald was affected by Zelda’s brief affair with a young French pilot, provoking him to lock her in their house. A construction of this experience can be seen in the way Fitzgerald depicts the 1290s context. For example in ‘The Great Gatsby’, there are numerous affairs and at one point, Mr Wilson locks up his wife to pre...
In 1896, F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on September twenty-fourth. Fitzgerald was named after the author of the “Star Spangled Banner” (LitFinder). He was the only child of Edward and Mollie McQuillan Fitzgerald, and he is Irish by ancestry(McMahon 89). According to Matthew Bruccoli, while Edward was a provincial aristocrat, his mother Mollie, was a “straight 1850 potato –famine Irish” (Bruccoli). Fitzgerald ended up moving to New Jersey in 1911 to obtain an education at Newman College Preparatory School. Two years later he transferred to Princeton University. After schooling, Fitzgerald became a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, but he never saw war. Instead of entering line of duty in WWI, he was assigned to stay at camp Sheridan. It was at this camp where he met his wife Zelda (LitFinder). While she and Fitzgerald were engaged, he tried to succeed in the advertisement business; however, Zelda, unwilling to wait for him to succeed, broke off the engagement (Bruccoli). Then in 1919 he published, This side of Paradise. This novel allowed Fitzgerald to become a well known literary figure. One year later he married Z...
The 1920’s was a tumultuous time for a young generation in search of a little fun. After World War I, gender roles were no longer the concrete pillars of society and the roaring 20’s era was born out of the ensuing chaos. This chaos included jazz, loose morals, and the sale of illegal alcohol that would ensure this generation of rabble-rousers would be notorious. Many writers attempted to capture the essence of this remarkable time. One of the most prolific of these writers, and one of the biggest contributors to the language that now surrounds the time, was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Through the theme of the deterioration of the American dream and American morals and traditions, F. Scott Fitzgerald reflected his life in the jazz age, including
...at characters create for themselves and the means by which they solve them serve as a way for Fitzgerald to exemplify the decade’s signature qualities while simultaneously criticizing them. Although it was a time of improvements in the way of life for all Americans, along with that came a certain moral decadence. In a new sense of comfort and thoughtlessness, a contempt for law and order, and a desire for wealth, the Jazz Age marked a crucial turning point in America, captured precisely by Fitzgerald.
Also known as the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties, the American people felt that they deserved to have some fun in order to forget the emotional toll and social scars left from the war. The Jazz Age was appropriately named due to the illegal activities and good times, which included music, parties, and flapper girls. Jazz was a new style of music that originated out of the New Orleans area, where one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time – Louis Armstrong – began his career. The energy of jazz was a very new and almost uncomfortable style for the very traditional, rigid family of the 1920s. Young people in particular seemed to enjoy this new music the most, as it made them feel carefree. The energy of jazz was symbolic of the era’s trans...
This Side of Paradise was written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald and later published in 1920. When Fitzgerald published the book, it would be the make or break for everything he loved. But to him what was most important was to win a gorgeous girl's hand in marriage, her being Zelda Sayre. She was his muse, a star in almost every book and short story he has ever written, a tale of a man with great ambitions and the girl who cannot marry him because of his lack of money. Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in Minnesota to a middle class family, and attended "the school for the Pretty and Lazy”, Princeton University, where his alcoholism is thought to have started.
...onsequently results from the relentless quest of the so desired American Dream. In the end, wealth and status take the place of genuine and authentic connections with people, diminishing the likelihood of true pleasure and self-fulfillment. As a result, Dexter is forced to accept that money does not buy happiness, regardless of his vigorous efforts and hard work in obtaining such success. Similar to Dexter Green, Fitzgerald is remembered as a self-made man, eager to rise above his hereditary placement in life. Reflective of his personal life, Fitzgerald's conflicted characters are a true representation of modernist's shallow nature, making his work definitive of the social history of the Jazz Age.
Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota to Mollie McQuillan, the daughter of an Irish immigrant (Fitzgerald, Bruccoli and Baughman, 1994) and charming businessman, Edward Fitzgerald (Martin, 1985). Fitzgerald was christened ‘Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’, in honour of his second cousin, Francis Scott Key, (Ibid, 2004). Francis Scott Key was an American lawyer, author, and amateur poet, from Georgetown. Key famously wrote the lyrics to the United States ' national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner" (Weybright, 2007). Fitzgerald 's mother, Mollie McQuillan, made her fortune in the wholesale grocery business (Pelzer, 2000). Fitzgerald’s father, Edward, although a businessman, Edward experienced only borderline financial success (Magill, 1999). The Fitzgerald family lived contentedly on the outskirts of the city 's most fashionable residential neighborhood, Summit Avenue, in a modest house, which was described by F. Scott Fitzgerald as “a house below the average on a street above the average” (Kane, 1976). The house has now been listed a National Historic Landmark for its association with the author of The Great Gatsby (National Historic Landmarks Program, 2007). The Fitzgeralds were supported largely and owed a lot to the liberality of the McQuillan family (Ibid,
Reading is an experience of art; without readers’ interaction, the meaning of any literary work is insufficient. “[Norman] Holland believes that we react to literary texts with the same psychological responses we bring to our daily life....That is, in various ways we unconsciously recreate in the text the world that exists in our mind.” (Tyson, 182) By telling a story that centers on the conflicts between two wealth young females whose personalities are distinctly different in the jazz age, Fitzgerald leads us on a journey of physical, and especially psychological transition of the protagonists through an omniscient narration. For female individuals, a tale emphasis on the youth,