Strolling in the American Literature Garden [Part 13]

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was an American writer famous for his novels and short stories in the 1920s.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was an American writer famous for his novels and short stories in the 1920s.

Fitzgerald was born into a middle-class Catholic family. He was named after his great-grandfather, Francis Scott Key, who wrote the American national anthem (the Star-Spangled Banner, 1814). His mother was the daughter of an Irish merchant and his father was a furniture store owner in Minnesota.

He attended Catholic schools as a child, was intelligent and had a good writing ability; later he went to university but did not graduate. At the end of World War I, he served in the army but did not participate in combat, but used his time to write.

The first part of his novel This Side of Paradise (1920), written during this time, is considered a manifesto for the young generation after World War I. The book sold more than 40,000 copies in its first year.

Also in 1920, he married Zelda, a beautiful girl from a noble family; they began a splendid life like in his novels, living in luxurious places (Paris, New York...), staying in elegant hotels around the world , until his wife lost her mind and he also suffered mental and physical decline.

Fitzgerald was the spokesman of the “Jazz Age.” His 1922 Tales of the Jazz Age featured sharp-edged, brazen, irresponsible characters who turned life into an endless game. The loose, easygoing emotional quality of Jazz suited the free-spirited, anti-establishment, fun-loving, decadent spirit of the American boom period immediately after World War I. “The Jazz Age,” he said, “was the age of the new generation, which had grown up to see all the gods dead, all the wars over, all the creeds in man overthrown.”

Fitzgerald is also known as one of the prominent writers of the “Lost Generation” like Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis with his masterpiece The Great Gatsby (1925). All of his stories are imbued with the sense that something is hopelessly wrong, they are typical Americans, believing that money, power and knowledge bring happiness, but all are disillusioned.

Fitzgerald always published a collection of short stories after writing a novel. The Great Gatsby, published when he was 29, is considered his masterpiece. This was followed by the collection of short stories , All the Sad Young Men (1926).

By this time he was facing many emotional and financial difficulties. Because he had to write many stories for the press, it was not until eight years later that he published the novel Tender is the Night (1934), which tells the story of the breakdown of a family and a conscience, referring to his own family.

He was a prolific writer, publishing four novels, four story collections and 164 short stories during his lifetime, many of which were adapted into films. Despite his temporary success and prosperity in the 1920s, Fitzgerald only achieved critical acclaim after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. He died at the age of 44, after a turbulent life.

This Side of Heaven evokes the hopeless “Lost Generation” mood of the author’s college years. The novel deals with a familiar theme for him: true love corrupted by money. He describes the early days of the Jazz Age very well.

The story is about Amory Blaine, a young man who goes to college but only cares about literature, has a "free" nature, and flirts with a number of flirtatious girls. But then he really falls in love with a young woman named Rosaline; she later rejects him to marry a young man with more money. During World War I, Amory served as an officer in France. When he returned, he worked in advertising. Not yet thirty years old, he was depressed, brazen, and regretful...

In The Great Gatsby, the author evokes many personal memories while satirically recounting a topical story about love and money in the frenzied years in America after World War I, the years dubbed “The Roaring Twenties.” He depicts a rich, carefree society with a false facade of glamour, lack of culture, and boring morality.

Gatsby, whose real name is James Gatz, is a romantic, uneducated playboy from a poor family in the American Midwest. After being discharged from the army in 1917-1918, he became very rich by smuggling alcohol, rising and falling in an instant. In his castle in New York, he received hundreds of high-class guests, most of whom were "old-fashioned scoundrels", exchanging a hundred thousand for a laugh. Gatsby once had an affair with Daisy, but she left him to marry an aggressive billionaire named Tom Buchanan. Gatsby became rich and flaunted his wealth just to win Daisy back, but failed. Once, Daisy drove Gatsby's car and accidentally ran over and killed Myrtle, Tom's lover, without knowing. Her husband followed the car's tracks and discovered that it was Gatsby's car; Gatsby "heroically" kept the truth to cover for Daisy, so he was shot dead by Myrtle's husband. Gatsby's friends and associates deserted him. Only his father and an old friend attended his funeral.

(to be continued)

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