preview

How Did Zelda Influence The Great Gatsby

Decent Essays

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was one of the greatest authors during the early 1900s. He wrote five award winning novels and countless more short stories. He was born on September 24, 1896, in Minnesota to an upper middle class catholic family. He wrote for his high school paper which encouraged him to follow his dreams of writing not academics. He died on December 21, 1940, of a heart attack. Fitzgerald is the supreme writer of the 1920s and 30s since he wrote numerous different novels and influenced the future authors. His writing style was radical for the time and changed the way of writing to a new and more complex style which writers use today. The roaring twenties and creation of Jazz music coupled with his own discourse with his wife, …show more content…

His book Flappers and Philosophers was based on his wife’s lifestyle, “Zelda was an icon of the "flapper" lifestyle and a symbol of the emerging cultural fascination with youth, conspicuous consumption, and leisure” (Curnutt). The book gives a synopsis of the roaring twenties, the changing ideas, and the leisure activities. The Great Gatsby is another book based on the changing times. The book is based during the Jazz Age which was the movement of the time. In addition to the Jazz Age, it deals with the obsession of money, and knowledge, which the Fitzgeralds were obsessed with. In chapter seven Gatsby realized, “Her voice is full of money ... That was it. I'd never understood it before. It was full of money – that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it ...” (Fitzgerald 99). Gatsby is realizing that she, Zelda, is full of money and loves to show that she has money to throw around. The Fitzgeralds lived an incredibly frugal lifestyle, and definitely embraced the 1920s lifestyle. They had parties almost every night had plenty of alcohol to go around, even though it was illegal. He wrote another book called This Side of Paradise. The plot of the book is when the main character goes to Princeton University during World War One. Fitzgerald went to Princeton University during World War One, therefore the book is almost an autobiography of his years at

Get Access