Marriage In Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Often times authors develop their characters or plots from people and events in their lives. F. Scott Fitzgerald is known for “describing in semi-autobiographical fiction the privileged lives of wealthy, aspiring socialites” which in turn created a new breed of characters in the 1920’s (Willhite). It is said that “His tragic life was an ironic analog to his romantic art” (“Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald”). Fitzgerald’s most famous work,The Great Gatsby “extends and synthesizes the themes that pervade all of his fiction: the callous indifference of wealth, the hollowness of the American success myth, and the sleaziness of the contemporary scene” (“Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald”). In the novel Daisy Buchanan and Gatsby’s relationship are a representation of his own marriage to Zelda Sayre. Fitzgerald depicts his forced and uneasy marriage with Zelda through his characterization and actions of Daisy Buchanan.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in September of 1896 to a middle-class american family in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was “a quiet man with beautiful Southern manners” (“Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald”). When Fitzgerald attended Princeton in 1913 “a small, handsome, blond boy with disconcerting green eyes” fought hard for success, but due to illness and low grades, he dropped out of Princeton in 1915 without a degree (“Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald”). In November of 1917, Fitzgerald enlisted into the army with a second lieutenant’s commission. He was stationed at Camp Sheridan, in Montgomery Alabama. It is there that Fitzgerald met Zelda Sayre, “the daughter of a justice of the supreme court of Alabama, a beautiful, witty, daring girl, as full of ambition and desire for the world as Fitzgerald”; Fitzgerald would come to marry Miss ...

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...is money and Zelda’s “necessity of financial stability” of Fitzgerald (Celine). Similar to how the desire for Daisy brought the downfall and death of Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s critics define his wife as “an inspiration and a liability”; likewise Fitzgerald’s close friend, Ernest Hemingway, alluded Zelda in A Movable Feast, as a harlot who sabotaged her husband’s career (Curnutt).
By the conclusion of The Great Gatsby, Gatsby and Daisy once again cannot be together; Daisy retrieves back to her abusive husband, Tom and Gatsby is murdered. Fitzgerald and Gatsby’s American Dream is unattainable, once Gatsby died, so did Scott’s mirage of his marriage. The tragic conclusion of the novel provides a peek into the despondent fantasy brought upon by his family’s detachment from reality, but the theme constructed in lust, determination and incapability to let go of the past.

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