Francis Scott Fitzgerald's Life and Accomplishments

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896, to an Irish Catholic family in St. Paul, Minnesota (Meyers, 1). He was named after his second cousin three times removed on his father's side, Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to the "Star-Spangled Banner." His mother, Mary McQuillan, was from an Irish-Catholic family that had made a lot of money Minnesota working as grocers (Meyers, 3). His dad, Edward Fitzgerald, had opened a wicker furniture store in St. Paul, and not too long after it failed, he took a job as a salesman for Procter & Gamble that made his family often travel back and forth from Buffalo to Syracuse in upstate New York during the early years of Fitzgerald's life. Fitzgerald's father lost his job with Procter & Gamble in 1908, when F. Scott Fitzgerald was 12. The Fitzgerald's moved back to St. Paul to live off of his mom's money she had made from being a grocer (Meyers, 10).

He went to St. Paul Academy, and when he was 13. He published his first piece of writing, which was a detective story, published in the school newspaper (Meyers, 16). In 1911, when Fitzgerald was 15 years old, his parents sent him to the Newman School, which was a highly respected Catholic preparatory school in New Jersey. While there, he met Father Sigourney Fay, who noticed his early talent in writing and encouraged him to go after his goals of becoming a writer. He graduated from the school in 1913. He decided to stay in New Jersey, at Princeton, to become a better writer (Meyers, 20). While he was at Princeton, he dedicated himself to becoming a brilliant writer. He wrote scripts for Princeton's famous Triangle Club musicals as well as numerous articles for the Princeton Tiger which was a comical magazine and stories fo...

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...rvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1069083.files/Unit%20II%20Readings/The%20Crack-Up.pdf) Fitzgerald was always good with words and was one who was really good with metaphors and similes. A good example is his how he compares the broken writer to a cracked plate. The book’s motif of loss and bittersweet longing is established in the opening paragraph of the first piece.

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Works Cited

("F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography" The Biography Channel website. 2011. 01 March 2011 http://www.biography.com/people/f-scott-fitzgerald-929626)

(SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Great Gatsby.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 5 Mar. 2014.)

(SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Winter Dreams.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 5 Mar. 2014.)

(http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1069083.files/Unit%20II%20Readings/The%20Crack-Up.pdf)