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literature as the imitation
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They say that art imitates life…or life imitates art. Either one is somewhat hard to believe. A few brushes of a paintbrush on a canvas, a mirror image on the film of a camera, or even a special combination of the 26 letters of the alphabet onto a page—imitating life? Of course, people can paint life, or take pictures of life, and even write about life. It’s a bit more obvious that the concept of life imitating art is a bit harder to believe. But you can learn from art—especially from the literary art. Books are teachers that you can become. When making art, you put a bit of yourself into it—it becomes a bit of you, and you become a bit of it. You can read about characters, fictional or otherwise, and want to be them. You place yourself in their shoes and learn from their mistakes and you inevitably become them for a little bit. When art imitates life, life in turn imitates art. Art imitating life is so common; we hardly ever point it out. We notice a few lives quite clearly through a self-portrait, a song, or even a book. Sometimes it isn’t as intentional as the artist meant it to be. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses events from his life so thoroughly in his novel, The Great Gatsby, leading us to believe he wrote the novel as a sort of autobiography emphasizing his interesting life and his relationship with his wife.
Fitzgerald was ambitious at a young age, and seemed to always know he’d have a place in the world. As described in PBS’s biography of Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, September 24th, 1896, his father a failed wicker furniture salesman and his mother an Irish immigrant by the name of Mary (Mollie) McQuillan with a large inheritance (PBS). In St. Paul, the family lived comfortably on Mollie’s inheritanc...
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...ing romance and first years as newlyweds immortalized into the pages of one of Fitzgerald’s most iconic novels. Fitzgerald’s unique writing style of fictionalizing real events that happened in his past gives his writing more enthusiasm and flavor comparatively to some writers.
Works Cited
Baughman, Judith S. "Art Imitating Life in Fitzgerald's Novels." Art Imitating Life in Fitzgerald's Novels. The Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina, 4 Dec. 2003. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
Bruccoli, Matthew J. "A Brief Life of Fitzgerald." Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, 2009. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.
PBS. "F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream & Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald Artist, Writer, Dancer and Wife." PBS. The Public Broadcasting System, n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.
There were more than just the culture of the 1920s that affected the way F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. His life experiences had a profound impact on his writings. F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul Minnesota. He grew up in a middle class household but in a wealthy neighborhood. They lived comfortably off of his mother Mollies inheritance but as a child Fitzgerald felt out of place with all of the wealthy people around him. While at the St.Paul Academy Fitzgerald developed his love for writing and wrote his first story, this passion continued on to Princeton University. While there he wrote plays and articles for the Princeton Tiger. His passion for writing got in the way of his academics and after three years at Princeton he
Fitzgerald was brought up in an upper class family and was highly educated throughout his life. He pursued writing at Princeton University, but was put into academic probation shortly after. Afterwards, he decided to drop out and continue his passion for writing novels and short stories. Fitzgerald then joined the army when his first story was unapproved. Upon his return, he met a southern Alabama belle named Zelda . Since she was a spoiled young lady, she declined Fitzgerald’s proposals, after seeing he had no fortune and had encouraged to firstly seek his fortune of his own. Throughout their life together the rich and adventurous couple maintained a crazy lifestyle filled with extravagant parties all over Europe. That soon ended when Zelda
F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in a nice neighborhood, but growing up he wasn’t privileged. He was raised in the upper-crest Summit Ave. neighborhood
The American Dream in Of Mice and Men written by John Steinbeck, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Two Kinds writer by Amy Tan, and in “Sophistication” by Sherwood Anderson.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s visionary writing style during the early twentieth century revolutionized a new style for other writers. “Theme is most dramatically expressed through character, and Fitzgerald used the people he created to convey his personal vision of the world” (Keshmiri 2). As Keshmiri states, Fitzgerald, unlike many other writers at the time, expresses his stories through the development of the characters. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and The Beautiful and the Damned illustrate the many flaws of human nature and how these flaws contribute to the downfall of the characters through their obsession with status, their inability to accept reality, and the use of alcohol.
F. Scott Fitzgerald Centenary Home Page. "The Great Gatsby's Theme". Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina, 1997.
“Riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.”(Fitzgerald). F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, into a very prestigious, catholic family. Edward, his father, was from Maryland, and had a strong allegiance to the Old South and its values. Fitzgerald’s mother, Mary, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul. His upbringing, affected much of his writing career. Half the time F. Scott Fitzgerald thought of himself as the “heir of his father's tradition, which included the author of The Star-Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key, after whom he was named” (F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography). The other half the time he acted as “straight 1850 potato-famine Irish” (F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography). Consequently, he had typically indecisive feelings about American life, which seemed to him at once “vulgar and dazzlingly promising” (F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography). This idea is expressed in much of Fitzgerald’s writing. From an early age he had an “intensely romantic imagination” (F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography); he longed for a life of passion, fame and luxury.
Shmoop Editorial Team. "F. Scott Fitzgerald: Zelda Fitzgerald." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 29 May 2014.
Fitzgerald was born on September 28th 1896 into an upper middle class family living in Saint Paul Minnesota. His mother and father Mollie and Edward Fitzgerald named him after his second cousin three times removed Francis Scott Key the author of the star spangled banner. His mother previously had two children Mary and Louise who unfortunately passed away before he was born from illnesses at the ages of one and three. Mollie Fitzgerald became pregnant once more after that but lost the baby an hour after birth. However in 1901 Scott’s Sister Annabel was born completing the family.
Doreski, C. K. "Fitzgerald, F. Scott 1896—1940." American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies, Retrospective Supplement 1. Ed. A. Walton Litz and Molly Weigel. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998. 97-120. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul Minnesota on September 24, 1896. His parents were Mary McQuillan and Edward Fitzgerald. Francis was the lone son of the couple however they had a daughter named Annabel who was five years younger than Francis. The Fitzgerald’s, who were Catholics, lived an upper-middle class lifestyle (Merriman). Francis attended St. Paul Academy where his writing career began. He penned “The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage” which was a short story that was printed in the school newspaper when he was thirteen. When he was fifteen, his parents sent him to a prestigious catholic school known as Newman School. Incidentally, he met Father Sigourney Fay, who encouraged Fitzgerald to pursue a writing career (Biography.com Staff).
F. Scott Fitzgerald is a famous novelist known for his numerous works, such as The Great Gatsby. In his novels, Fitzgerald uses a lot of the same concepts and themes to have the same story line in these works. The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise are two examples of Fitzgerald’s use of similar characteristics.
Fitzgerald lived his life to the fullest. After graduated he gained qualities much like Gatsby. " the very qualities that made him a success-his innocence, his restlessness, his incessant dreaming, his sense of indestructibility, led to his downfall." (Tessitore 99) This quote is about Fitzgerald but can easily be used for Gatsby. His unwillingness to give up Daisy led to his eventual death. They have countless similarities, " in the act of recording Gatsby's experiences, he discovers himself." (Samuels 4) Gatsby is truly Fitzgerald's sub-conscious' imagine of himself.
McMahon, Thomas. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Authors & Artists for Young Adults. Michigan: Gale Research, 1998. N. pag. Print.
During the book, Fitzgerald is able to create a superior storyline by tying all the events in the story, directly or indirectly, together. Ernest Lockridge notes in his criticisms about the book: