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Author interview f scott fitzgerald
F scott fitzgerald and his impact on american literature
Stories and essays about coming of age
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This Side of Paradise is a semi-autobiographical coming of age story about Amory Blaine. Amory is talented, charming, and handsome, the trinity of egotism. Like many of F.Scott Fitzgerald’s works This Side of Paradise takes place during the early 20th century, a time of extravagance and the rise of the Flapper: a woman whose dress, dance, and demeanor differed drastically from prior generations. Amory spends most of his youth life traveling from place to place with his mother Beatrice. After a nervous breakdown, Amory is left with his Aunt and Uncle, in Minneapolis. He spends two brief years there before accepting admissions to a boarding school named St. Regis Prep, in Connecticut. Early on he struggles with school and making friends, but
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American classic, The Great Gatsby, tells a story of how love and greed lead to death. The narrator of the novel, Nick Carraway, tells of his unusual summer after meeting the main character, Jay Gatsby. Gatsby’s intense love makes him attempt anything to win the girl of his dreams, Daisy Buchanan. All the love in the world, however, cannot spare Gatsby from his unfortunate yet inevitable death. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald utilizes the contrasting locations of East Egg and West Egg to represent opposing forces vital to the novel.
Loving someone is a wondrous experience, giving life light and a sense of fulfillment. But frequently the love does not last, causing deep emotional pain and a new dullness to life. In F.Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald repeatedly uses the motif and imagery of the eyes to present how much the lack of love can affect the happiness and joy in a person’s life. When people are separated and possibly reunited, their eyes seem to show the emotional turmoil that was caused by the time apart.
Crossing the porch where we had dined that June night three months before, I came to a small rectangle of light which I guessed was the pantry window. The blind was drawn, but I found a rift at the sill.
F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the seasons as an intricate part of the setting in "Winter Dreams". The seasons are a reflection of the human life cycle. We are given Dexter's outlook of each season throughout the story. Dexter Green longs to live the American Dream of a prosperous life with a beautiful family like the rich people he encounters at the golf course.
The Value of Jay Gatsby Jay Gatsby, who is one of the main characters of the Great Gatsby, is a man with a mysterious background and an unknown personality. He doesn't mention too much about his past except certain fabricated highlights of his life which were designed to impress others. The strange and humorous thing is that he carries articles of evidence that back up most of his lies to prove that he isn't lying. Gatsby is also the kind of man that is used to getting what he wants no matter what the consequences are, causing him to be a very determined man that once has an idea in his mind won't let it go until he accomplishes it. The things that Jay Gatsby values the most is money, to impress others and gain acceptance and most of all, having things his own way.
“The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir” is a vivid recollection of Staceyann Chin's traumatic childhood as she discovers her voice and identity growing up in Jamaica beginning in 1972. At the age of four, Staceyann is already experiencing the oppressions related with being a girl. Delano, her older brother by two years, is the only male in the house as both of their fathers are out of the picture. Since they are both raised by their deaf and illiterate grandmother, Delano exercises his masculinity over Staceyann in numerous ways, even at the age of six. Wether it be the games and communication at home or learning in school; Delano is always prioritized over Staceyann. Although they both long for the return of their mother whom abandoned them after Staceyann was born, it is she who is affected in the long run. Bounced around to different families, Staceyann has issues with keeping her mouth shut, thus landing her in tons of trouble all the time. Every adult figure she has to deal with relies on The Bible for punishment reinforcement. “Stacey, the Good Book tell us, In every thing give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you (pg 7, The Other Side of Paradise).” When every answer is in relation to The Bible, Staceyann is always left lost and confused. If God is responsible for everything, why is she left motherless in poverty? Her journey continues as she excels through grade school and into high school. Along the way she encounters a few relationships with boys, but is never fully able to trust them due to her being sexually assaulted numerous times as a child. As Staceyann meets her mother and visits with her father, she is forced at a young age to fend for herself. In a stru...
Damn. I wish I was in one of the bigger classes. At least in there there’s a lower probability of me being called on.
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...
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,
F. Scott Fitzgerald uses The Great Gatsby in order to display the wretchedness of upper-class society in the United States. The time period, the 1920s, was an age of new opulence and wealth for many Americans. As there is an abundance of wealth today, there are many parallels between the behavior of the wealthy in the novel and the behavior of today’s rich. Fitzgerald displays the moral emptiness and lack of personal ethics and responsibility that is evident today throughout the book. He also examines the interactions between social classes and the supposed noblesse oblige of the upper class. The idea of the American dream and the prevalence of materialism are also scrutinized. All of these social issues spoken about in The Great Gatsby are relevant in modern society. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses this novel as an indictment of a corrupt American culture that is still present today.
American Pastoral written by Philip Roth is a novel that revolves around the character Seymour “Swede” Levov, a prosperous Jewish American business man and a former high school star athlete from New Jersey. During the 1960s the Swede’s pastoral life is thrown into havoc when his daughter Merry, a teenage war protester is the main suspect in the bombing of a post office in which the town’s doctor, an innocent bystander, is killed. Through a variety of literary devices, Roth makes the point that in the end, no matter how much effort goes into keeping things orderly and upright, chaos eventually overtakes everything.
“His use of a narrator allowed Fitzgerald to keep clearly separated…the two sides of his nature, the middle-western Trimalchio and the spoiled priest who disapproved of but grudgingly admired him. Fitzgerald shuffled back and forth between their attitudes…” (Mizener 185). Fitzgerald was a part of two worlds, the Middle West represented by Carraway’s efforts to hold fast to its simple virtues, and the East exemplified by Gatsby’s corruption by its urban sophistication and culture. Like Fitzgerald, Carraway lived internally, reflecting deeply on life as he lived it and fighting to resolve his inner conflict with his surroundings. Both were watchers of life who, at once, aspired to reach great heights but also were hesitant to take the falls of the morally dishonest examples that they
Bewley, Marius. "Fitzgerald and the American Dream." Bloom's Literature. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.
...t, Stephen, gen. ed. “Paradise Lost.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 2012. Print. 36-39.
“Paradise Lost.”* The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt and M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. *(page). Print.