F. Scott Fitzgeral and His Impact in American Literature and Other Writers

713 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Difference between hemingway and fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say” (qtd. in Goodreads). In Fitzgerald's life he overcame many obstacles such as alcoholism and his wife going to an insane asylum, but tragedy often creates the most spectacular writers. His skill is seen in almost every piece he produced,which in turn created a legend. F. Scott Fitzgerald revolutionized American literature through his accurate portrayal of the 1920’s.
Fitzgerald was an amazing writer who influenced the life of many and gave the American people a peek into the somewhat mysterious world of the roaring twenties. Fitzgerald started as a poor man and ended his life as a wealthy man, but never seemed to find his place. “He had the ability to experience the lifestyle of the wealthy from an insider's perspective, yet never felt a part of this click and always felt [like] the outsider” (EXPLORING Novels). Providing Fitzgerald with these unique experiences helped him develop his writing style, many critics of his work called it double vision or having more than one way of seeing life. (EXPLORING Novels). Since Fitzgerald was in the rich lifestyle he had a lot to write about but, he also wrote about himself in many of his works. “In Fitzgerald's case, his life paralleled the trajectory of his generation to an almost eerie degree” (Shmoop.com). Having this favored position gave Fitzgerald an advantage that other writers did not have because his life was very similar to many regular people at the time so many of his readers related to his work.
The current American people favor a pleasure seeking lifestyle, this fits in well with what Fitzgerald's writings had to offer his readers; proving that Fitzger...

... middle of paper ...

...zgeralds time, a glimpse into the epicurean lifestyle. Fitzgerald did not merely influence society but he also revolutions other writers, such as J.D. Salinger. Fitzgerald’s literature has extensively impacted Americans and will continue to influence people for years to come.

Works Cited
Benet, Stephen V. "Fitzgerald's Unfinished Symphony." Unz.org. The Saturday Review of
Literature, 6 Dec. 1941. Web. 1 Mar. 2014.
"F. Scott Fitzgerald." EXPLORING Novels. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resources in Context.
Web. 5 Feb. 2014.
"F. Scott Fitzgerald." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 11 Feb.
2014.
"F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes." Goodreads. Goodreads, Inc., 13 May 2008. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.
Gabriel, Kathy. "The Influence of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald on J.D. Salinger."
Salingerincontext.org RSS. WordPress, Dec. 2009. Web. 13 Feb. 2014.

Show More
Related

  • F. Scott Fitzgerald

    565 Words  | 2 Pages

    F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “I am not a great man, but sometimes I think the impersonal and objective quality of my talent, and the sacrifices of it, in pieces, to preserve its essential value has some sort of epic grandeur” (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” St. James). Fitzgerald had heavy drinking problems and faced many financial failures throughout his life of writing but has proved to be gifted in many ways of writing. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was a short story writer, an essayist, and a novelist that was most famous during the Jazz Age of the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

    Read More

  • A Comparison Of The Novels Of The Great Gatsby And Judy Fitzgerald

    1119 Words  | 3 Pages

    Francis Scott Fitzgerald, also known under his writer’s name, F. Scott Fitzgerald, is revered as a famous American novelist for his writing masterpieces in the 1920’s and 1930’s. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about his extravagant lifestyle in America that his wife, Zelda, their friends, and him lived during that era. In fact, a lot of his novels and essays were based off of real-life situations with exaggerated plots and twists. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels were the readers looking glass into his tragic life that resulted in sad endings in his books, and ultimately his own life. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in a nice neighborhood, but growing up, he wasn’t privileged.

    Read More

  • The Rich in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    871 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...e “friends” didn’t even care enough to come back to his funeral. Fitzgerald was a part of the rich. He had a good quantity of money, drank a lot, partied typically, and had affairs. His American Dream associated with the category that he was a part of, similar to Jefferson also King. All of their dreams go with the part of being the society they belonged to. Fitzgerald needed change just like the others too, however he needed to alter who he was. Jefferson and King needed to change different people’s perspective of them.

    Read More

  • Importance of Myrtle in The Great Gatsby

    1190 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.

    Read More

  • Gatsby Rough Draft

    1013 Words  | 3 Pages

    Fitzgerald, of course, was an author, so the reason behind the book being written was that he hoped to gain popularity and earn money, which he successfully accomplished. To Fitzgerald, the novel was a "consciously artistic achievement" and allowed him to achieve his goals of status and revenue, even though the fame came slightly after he might have hoped.

    Read More

  • Failure and Destruction of a Romantic Ideal in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

    1652 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mizener, Arthur, ed. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963.

    Read More

  • The American Dream in the Writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald

    1118 Words  | 3 Pages

    F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the most influential writers of modern day society. He holds this title because he wrote about things that drive people's everyday life. He wrote in two different periods that were very significant in the social development of America. These two periods of time symbolized not only the generation that he was writing about, but it also speaks to the present day generation.

    Read More

  • The Life & Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

    561 Words  | 2 Pages

    Merriman, C. D. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." The Literature Network. Jalic Inc., 2007. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.

    Read More

  • Horrors of WWI Reflected in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Writing

    2584 Words  | 6 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • F. Scott Fitzgerald's American Dream

    1653 Words  | 4 Pages

    “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.

    Read More

  • Great Gatsby

    742 Words  | 2 Pages

    By the end of World War I, many American authors were ready to change their ways and views on writing. Authors are tired of tradition and limitations. One of these writers was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was a participant in the wild parties with bootleg liquor, but he was also a critic of this time. His book, The Great Gatsby is an excellent example of modernist literature, through its use of implied themes and fragmented storyline.

    Read More

  • Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity by Roland Marchand

    1828 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...m that was based more on wealth and possessions and less on hard work and achievement. The fact that he later rebelled against the material 1920s culture shows that he was in fact cautioning against this lifestyle rather than encouraging it.” This more than anything proves Fitzgerald is making a commentary on the corruption of the American Dream rather than simply the tale of wealthy lovers.

    Read More

  • The Jazz Age Explored in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

    1388 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...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.

    Read More

  • Textual Analysis Of The Great Gatsby

    947 Words  | 2 Pages

    F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the most compelling twentieth century writers, (Curnutt, 2004). The year 1925 marks the year of the publication of Fitzgerald’s most credited novel, The Great Gatsby (Bruccoli, 1985). With its critiques of materialism, love and the American Dream (Berman, 1996), this dramatic idyllic novel, (Harvey, 1957), although poorly received at first, is now highly regarded as Fitzgerald’s finest work (Rohrkemper, 1985) and is his publisher, Scribner 's most popular title, (Donahue, 2013). The novel achieved it’s status as one of the most influential novels in American history around the nineteen fifties and sixties, over ten years after Fitzgerald 's passing, (Ibid, 1985)

    Read More

  • The Great Gatsby Book Report

    3257 Words  | 7 Pages

    In writing this book, commonly refered to as the “Great American Novel”, F. Scott Fitzgerald achieved in showing future generations what the early twenties were like, and the kinds of people that lived then. He did this in a beautifully written novel with in-depth characters, a captivating plot, and a wonderful sense of the time period.

    Read More

More about F. Scott Fitzgeral and His Impact in American Literature and Other Writers

Open Document