Tender Is the Night Parallels Fitzgerald’s Life
Away! Away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! Tender is the night…
-From “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats
Charles Scribner III in his introduction to the work remarks that “the title evokes the transient, bittersweet, and ultimately tragic nature of Fitzgerald’s ‘Romance’ (as he had originally subtitled the book)” (Fitzgerald ix). Tender Is the Night parallels Fitzgerald’s own struggles with his mentally ill Zelda, and the characters are carefully constructed from his interactions with the social elite of artists,
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The matricide piece came from his fascination with the 1925 case of Dorothy Ellington, a sixteen-year-old from San Francisco, who killed her mother who did not approve of her wild lifestyle (Bruccoli 18 “The Comp…”); Mularky’s profession, movie director, most likely originated from Fitzgerald’s interaction in Rome in 1924 with crew from the movie Ben-Hur (Bruccoli 22 “The Comp…”). From 1925 to 1930, this “Mularky” version underwent five revisions with titles such as Our Type, The World’s Fair, The Mularky Case, and The Boy Who Killed His Mother.
In 1926, All the Sad Young Men was published, and in 1927 he went to Hollywood to work for United Artists, where he met an attractive actress named Lois Moran (Stern xi). This Hollywood experience fueled the sixth revision of his fourth novel, about a movie director named Lew Kelly, his wife Nicole and a young actress named Rosemary. Fitzgerald in the summer of 1929 informed Scribner’s about this new idea and by the fall said that he only had another month to devote to the novel before he would be finished (Bruccoli 60 “The Comp…). He scrapped the sixth version fairly quickly, but Rosemary grew out of this short-lived version (Bruccoli xxiii “The Comp…”). Over the latter half of the Twenties, Zelda illustrated signs of psychotic behavior, such as her ballet obsession. In 1930, while the Fitzgeralds lived in Paris after the Great Depression, Zelda broke down completely
Fitzgerald’s love life with Zelda has been used to create love stories between Daisy and Gatsby. Amory and Rosalind. The women in Fitzgerald’s novel are a portrayal of Zelda, Fitzgerald’s wife. Zelda’s personalities traits consist of the southern belle type of girl, beautiful who many men find attractive, but is also materialistic, hollow, greedy and emotionally and mentally unstable. Male characters in Fitzgerald’s stories have been based on Fitzgerald’s own character and his own life experiences. His battle with alcoholism and being bisexual can be seen in the male characters in his novels. Like how characters in Tender Is The Night were homosexuals and alcoholics; so was Nick’s homosexual trait in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s writing has also been influenced by the social context of America during the 1920-1930’s, Jazz age period. During the Jazz age period, women started to fight for their rights. They wanted to be equal with men socio-economically. Feminism was first introduced at the time. Racism was a big problem (still is today but probably less). If anyone in America were not white, they would have been considered as second class
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, “The Great Gatsby,” he mirrors his life and the people in
The couple later got married on April 3, 1920 in St. Patrick Cathedral, located in New York. A little over a year later He and his wife had a child named Frances (Doreski). Fitzgerald lived more by his feelings than his morals (Doreski). He and his wife, Zelda, would throw extravagant parties which put the couple in financial hardship early on. Sometimes these parties would even last 4 days in a row (Shain). Because of all the partying and choice of lifestyle, Zelda developed a mental disorder and had her first mental breakdown in 1930. Fitzgerald wrote short stories to pay for his wife’s treatments. However, he is best known for his works This Side of Paradise, from which he gained his wealth, and The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald’s most popular work (Coale 190). This Side of Paradise was his first autobiographical novel. The book is based on Fitzgerald’s childhood and portrays him as a young boy who is ready for his exciting life to begin (Shain). After it was published, Fitzgerald became rich quickly. Following Zelda’s hospitalization, he wrote the book Tender is the Night. The book was centered on a wealthy psychiatrist and his unstable wife (Bruccoli). By this
The narrator suffers from catalepsy, a physical condition in which the individual cannot move or speak for hours or, in extreme cases, for months. According to the narrator’s explanation, what are some of the ways that one can tell a cataleptic is still living?
"A Few Words about F. Scott Fitzgerald." The Public Domain Review. Web. 2 July 2015. .
When writing this book, Fitzgerald uses his own surroundings and even attacks the idea of love throughout the novel. Fitzgerald is similar to Gatsby and it is evident, because of how they both are hopeless romantics. He was in a relationship with a woman named Zelda and deeply loves her. They both live normal lives and even, “led wild lives filled with parties and intrigue. [However] The drama in their lives ended badly: Fitzgerald became an alcoholic and suffered mental collapses, while Zelda
The story starts off with a hopelessly romantic side. It all begins by learning about a seventeen year old girl named Zelda and a First Lieutenant named Francis Scott Fitzgerald who is known to who they became to be in modern day history. Zelda can be classified as a wild child. Her summer tan gave her skin the color of a rose petal, her hair was gold, and her eyes seemed to change color with her prismatic moods. Scott Fitzgerald was an individual who spent four years at Princeton without earning his undergraduate degree. He gave little contribution to classroom discussions, and was lazy in all things but reading and writing. In this novel, Joshua Zeitz is able to educate the readers on the becoming of new women in America. Zeitz is also able to inform the readers on the evolution and growth of the liberties associated with the new American women. As one of the themes in the first section of the book, Zeitz develops a concept by discussing and analyzing the life of CoCo Chanel. She was a French
This girl was rich with old money. Old money comes with a certain social class lining. This social class is very pristine and extraordinarily exclusive, so exclusive that if you do not have the same type of money as them you are poor and therefore you cannot be associated with them. Since, Fitzgerald did not have this money he experienced the demoralization people in this class put on people like him when it came to love. "As Ginevra's visiting beau, he escorted her to parties, dinners, and dances. But he also spent a "bad day at the McCormicks," endured a "Disappointment," and heard someone declare, "Poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls" (Ledger, unpaginated). A few months later he and Ginevra broke up conclusively, but Fitzgerald did not soon stop caring about her." (Chawkins 16). With this Fitzgerald moved on too Zelda, but he never forgot about how he was spoken too at that party because he did not have the money that everyone else did. He wrote about it in other works too including one short story "But if you don't have anything for the collection box, the girl will notice. And if you don't have enough to spend, the
F. Scott FitzgeraldF. Scott Fitzgerald is in many ways one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century. In his first novel, This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald epitomized the mindset of an era with the statement that his generation had, grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, and all faiths in man shaken(Fitzgerald 307). Aside from being a major literary voice of the twenties and thirties, Fitzgerald was also among The Lost Generations harshest and most insightful social critics. In his classic novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald blatantly criticized the immorality, materialism, and hedonism which characterized the lifestyles of Americas bourgeois during the nineteen-twenties. Collectively, Fitzgeralds novels and short stories provide some of the best insight into the lifestyles of the rich during Americas most prosperous era, while simultaneously examining major literary themes such as disillusionment, coming of age, and the corruption of the American Dream. The life of F. Scott Fitzgerald is marked by as much, if not more, romanticism and tragedy than his novels. Throughout Fitzgeralds life, he unsuccessfully battled alcoholism, depression, and himself, in a quest for both personal and literary identity. At the age of twenty-three, Fitzgerald published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to critical raves and unimaginable economic success. Shortly after the publishing of this novel, Fitzgerald was able to coerce Zelda Sayre into marriage. This
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.… Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.… And one fine morning—” (Fitzgerald 180). In this quote from The Great Gatsby, Nick attempts to describe the nature of Gatsby’s hope and draws the parallel to all of our hopes and dreams that we have as Americans. F. Scott Fitzgerald, an American novelist and short-story writer, was an amazing author who used his work, just like in the quote above, to write about the Roaring Twenties and the hopes of Americans during that time. His earlier works show an idealistic feeling for the potentials of life at college and in “The East,” he attained the sobriquet of “the spokesman of the Jazz Age.”
Fitzgerald began working on ‘Tender is the Night’ during the late 1920s but found it difficult as his wife Zelda’s mental illnesses and their money issues had affected him. When Zelda had her first nervous breakdown in 1930s they were living in Europe and she was hospitalized in Switzerland. It became certain that she would never recover fully. Fitzgerald's father died in 1931, which can be seen in the novel portrayed as Dick’s father’s death. Combined with his insistent alcoholism, these misfortunes and setbacks overwhelmed him. Fitzgerald had settled in suburban Baltimore by 1932, and had finally settled on what his novel was going to be about. The books plot was about a gifted young psychiatrist called Dick Diver. He marries one of his patients, Nicole Warren. Dick had virtually limitless potential and when he decides to decision to marry a woman he falls in love with who is mentally ill, he eventually descends into depression and alcoholism as their disaster-prone relationship fails. The book went through many versions and took a lot of time; the original story was to be about matricide, the act of killing ones Mother. “Such a laboured birth of his fourth novel had never been the writer’s original intention” (Blazek, 1). The book can be described as a thinly-veiled somewhat autobiographical novel due how similar the story’s main plot is to Fitzgerald’s own life. It is echoing Fitzgerald's difficulties with his wife Zelda. It also depicts the damaging effects of having
After a time of prosperity, the roaring 1920’s became a decade of social decay and declining moral values. The forces this erosion of ethics can be explained by a variety of theories. However, F. Scott Fitzgerald paints a convincing portrait of waning social virtue in his novel, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald portrays the nefarious effects of materialism created by the wealth-driven culture of the time. This was an era where societal values made wealth and material possessions a defining element of one’s character. The implications of the wealthy mindset and its effects on humanity are at the source of the conflict in The Great Gatsby, offering a glimpse into the despair of the 20’s. During a time
F. Scott Fitzgerald—“one of the most celebrated writers of all times”. (Mini Bio)Through his novels or short stories, he was able to reveal the secrets of himself that carried out his destiny. The “Roaring Twenties” were surrounded by luxurious lifestyles that a small town boy could only dream of. Fitzgerald recognized this and craved that lifestyle and when he came upon it, he realized it was not all that he had dreamed it would be, for wealth was not the problem solver.
This excerpt further illustrates the difficulties that F. Scott Fitzgerald experienced while writing his novels. An allusion to Zelda is provided when Fitzgerald writes, “ Mr. McChesney, it’s the hospital calling again”( Fitzgerald 532). The passage is a way for Fitzgerald to draw the reader's focus onto the fact that “Two Wrongs” is actually about his marital issues with his
him. So on the third of April of 1920 in St. Patrick's Cathedral New York City