Essay Comparing Hemingway's A Very Short Story and Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise

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Comparing Hemingway's A Very Short Story and Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise

When you first read a tragic, melodramatic love scene you feel like your heart is breaking too. Sometimes you cry. It is only after the initial rush of feelings that you begin to feel cheated. Usually the kind of writing that gives you the urge to be demonstrative does not stay with you as long as something more subtle. In Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, the reader is presented with such a love scene in the form of a play. I admit to having sobbed for a solid minute after reading about the ill-fated romance between Amory Blaine and Rosalind Connage. However, the same subject, with different characters, told in a much more concise, objective manner in Ernest Hemingway's A Very Short Story had a much deeper effect on me.

It may be that the honesty of experience had much to do with the differences between the stories. This Side of Paradise is often seen as a loosely based autobiography, but there is no direct basis in reality for the Amory and Rosalind episode. Fitzgerald did have a turbulent relationship with his wife Zelda, but the tragic parting in the novel and Rosalind's later marriage to another man firmly place the story in the realm of fiction. Hemingway's account of the meeting and parting of two lovers, on the other hand, comes directly from his own life. While there is a feeling in This Side of Paradise that Fitzgerald is trying too hard to make the story realistic, Hemingway's account cannot help but convey the honesty that is generally found when a writer draws directly on his own experience.

The style and structure of the Hemingway story also make it more believable and more effective. Even the...

... middle of paper ...

...ing in a taxi cab through Lincoln Park," that Hemingway's protagonist tried to forget about his lost love by indulging in the more shallow gratification of easy sex. Fitzgerald's Amory Blaine turns to alcohol instead, but the concept is the same. However, after nine pages of Amory's bar exploits we have already begun to forget what the problem was in the first place.

Two more disparate accounts of a short-lived love would be difficult to find. Each is successful in its own way. The Fitzgerald version elicited an immediate and powerful reaction from me, but it was the Hemingway story that made me understand the subject more deeply. While A Very Short Story, at first glance, may seem unable to convey the depth and breadth of feeling of the longer Fitzgerald passage, it actually accomplishes its aim more quickly without sacrificing meaning.

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