The Great Gatsby Essay

After dropping out of Princeton as a Junior, Fitzgerald found himself as a second lieutenant in the United States Military. When he was stationed in Montgomery, Alabama, he met the love of his life, Zelda Sayre. When he was discharged from the military, after seeing no battles, he set out to marry Zelda in the spring of 1920 in New York (Donaldson). Some say the love was as passionate and toxic to that of Romeo and Juliet, both being clinical alcoholics. This love gave birth to Francis Scott Fitzgerald, or “Scottie” (Donaldson).

F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American author who was known for his novels that generally take place during the Jazz Age after World War I. His use of similes add deeper imagery and to emphasize certain descriptions that are necessary to understand in his distinctive writing style. Fitzgerald incorporated a lot of his own personal life into his works; his struggles with alcoholism, mental disorders and marital problems are generally thrown into almost all his novels. Many of his stories can be read for their symbolic qualities. Therefore, F. Scott Fitzgerald was popular for using uncommon and intricate descriptions to help the reader better grasp what is going on in the story.

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired” F. Scott Fitzgerald said this about people he was noticing around him. He considered himself a pursuer because he always had the dream of becoming a famous writer. Through the many obstacles he had to get through like the military, academic probation, and many other personal struggles he endured he never let any of that stop him from becoming the great writer he was. F. Scott Fitzgerald became a famous writer due to his early life and education, his writing career, and for what he did before he died.

In other words, why did Fitzgerald write a novel so closely resembling his life, what is he saying? American culture was already so strong in the 1920’s with the post-war spirit and new music and festivities, so the dream to succeed in the growing nation was ever so present. The American Dream often relates to finding the perfect spouse and immense financial success. Fitzgerald found prosperity in his writing and love, but maybe he can see through the good fortune. Getting his big break in literature came with time, and when his love left him due to his poverty only to come back when he gained success.

Fitzgerald started writing at an early age his high school. Newspaper published his detective stories encouraging him to continue writing more. At the age of 21 fitzgerald was stationed by the U.S Army near montgomery alabama in 1918 where he met and fell in love with an 18 yrs old southern girl named zelda belle sayre. Fitzgerald didn't have enough money to convince zelda to marry him and tired of waiting for him to make his fortune. She broke their engagement in 1919. “In the end we were all just humans drunk on the idea that love only love could heal our brokenness” (fitzgerald p.43). Fitzgerald enjoyed fame and fortune and his novels reflected their lifestyle. Scott fitzgerald struggled making his money when he was doing his advertising business but zelda grew tired of waiting for him to get his fortune. Fitzgerald never as positive o him being successful in his writing business without zelda on his side. She felt that was too much pressure with fitzgerald. She insisted him to find his success first first on his

“Riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.”(Fitzgerald). F. Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, into a very prestigious, catholic family. Edward, his father, was from Maryland, and had a strong allegiance to the Old South and its values. Fitzgerald’s mother, Mary, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul. His upbringing, affected much of his writing career. Half the time F. Scott Fitzgerald thought of himself as the “heir of his father's tradition, which included the author of The Star-Spangled Banner, Francis Scott

F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the greatest writers in the 1920s. Not only is he one of the greatest writers of this time, but he is also one of the most known. Many people know about him and some of the work that he has done. Some of his books are used in school in today's world. Most people have at least heard about one of the books that he has written. His books are very popular. Most if not all of his books were successful. But some were more successful than others.

The Lavish Lifestyle of F. Scott Fitzgerald Author F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1886 in St. Paul, Minnesota to Edward and Molly Fitzgerald. His mother’s family had been very wealthy, and when his mother’s father passed she inherited her father’s fortune. Fitzgerald’s father, Edward, was a distant relative to Francis Scott Key, the writer of “The Star Spangled Banner”. Fitzgerald was named after the aforementioned relative, Francis Scott Key, and destined to be great in the eyes of his mother and father. Fitzgerald is known best for his works throughout the Jazz Age; the period of time from 1918-1929.

He was commissioned as second Lieutenant and was placed in Camp Sheridan, outside of Alabama. He met his future wife Zelda there and after the war, he left to New York City hoping to have he could save up enough money to convince Zelda to marry him. He quit his job after a while, and returned to St. Paul’s to work on his novel. He wrote the This Side Of Paradise which was an autobiographical story about love and greed. Almost overnight, it turned Fitzgerald into one of the country’s best young writers. A week after the novel was published, he married Zelda and had a child with her. Her name was Frances Scott Fitzgerald and was born in 1921. F. Scott FItzgerald loved his new “celebrity” status and became know as a playboy and became less know as a serious writer. From 1920 through the rest of his writing career, he wrote short stories to support himself. In 1937 FItzgerald tried his hand at screenwriting. During this time, he began writing his fourth novel The Love of The Last Tycoon which he couldn’t complete because of his death from a heart attack on December 21, 1940. At age 44, Fitzgerald died feeling like a complete failure, but since his death, he gained more fame because of one his best

Despite never achieving much success while he was alive, Fitzgerald is now regarded as one of the greatest American authors of all time.

At the age of 26, after his son had been born, F. Scott found himself in a lot of debt so he began writing again. He had told his editor, Maxwell Perkins, “I want to write something new— something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and incredibly patterned”(Baker.) What he wrote would later become his most famous work and an American classic, The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby was publishes on April 10, 1925. It was a symbolic love story with a twisted plot that “develops slowly toward a violently dramatic incident and an ironical conclusion”("The Great Gatsby”.) The novel was complimented on its “directness and simplicity”and technique of “slowly and enigmatically creating the character of Gatsby”("The Great Gatsby”.) The novel became a success because of its interesting point of view and brilliant characterizations,”its individual scenes and its dialogue as in its general effects”("The Great Gatsby”.) Gatsby was seen as a “classic novel of ambition and self destruction”(Daisley.) As the fame of The Great Gatsby started to grow Fitzgerald was rapidly “nearing the peak of his fame and

Frances Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24th, 1896 in St. Paul Minnesota and died of a heart attack in an apartment in Hollywood on December 21st, 1940. Throughout his career, Fitzgerald wrote many works, traveled the world, and served in the United States Army. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote mostly short stories but became famous because of his novel This Side of Paradise and became even more famous because of The Great Gatsby which was released in 1925. The time period in which Fitzgerald lived played an extensive role in his work. Fitzgerald is one of the all time greatest American authors solely of the fact that his works displayed “The American Dream.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American author novels and short stories. He was born on September 24, 1896 and died on December 21, 1940 due to his alcohol abuse. F. Scott Fitzgerald was born to the parents of Edward and Mary McQuillan. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American authors of the twentieth century. He finished four novels, but the fifth novel of his was published posthumously. Most of his work included incidents from his own life. He would write about what he saw throughout his life. Paris in the nineteen twenties proved to be the most influential. Like most professional authors at the time, Fitzgerald supplemented his income by writing short stories for the magazine Esquire. Although Fitzgerald’s passion lay in writing novels, only his first novel sold well enough to support the opulent lifestyle that he had. Fitzgerald’s work has inspired writers ever since he published his first article. He left behind a great legacy following his death. Fitzgerald had been an alcoholic since his college days, and became notorious during the nineteen twenties for extraordinarily heavy drinking; leaving him in poor health by the late nineteen thirties “I was drunk for many years, and then I died.”(F. Scott Fitzgerald) His first novel’s success made him famous, and he marries the woman of his dreams, but he later descended into drinking and his wife had a mental breakdown. Following the unsuccessful Tender is the Night; Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood and became a

While Fitzgerald’s stories often have common themes running through them, they are not formulaic or predictable. Fitzgerald once said: “As soon as I feel I am writing to a cheap specification, my pen freezes and my talent vanishes over the hill” (qtd. in Bruccoli xv). His stories are often unpredictable and do not always have happy endings. Moreover, many of the stories have morals at their center. They often deal with issues that are very telling of this period in history. As Mangum says: “Fitzgerald’s short fiction, often through subtext, both deconstructs post-World War I values and also speaks to issues that transcend the modern” (66). It is for reasons such as this that Fitzgerald’s short stories are such a valuable asset to American literature.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) is about a man, Nick Carraway, who is curious about his neighbor-- a rich man named Jay Gatsby who is searching the love of his life, Daisy Buchanan. The novel beings in West Egg, Long Island with Nick buying a new home, and is invited to a party by Gatsby. Gatsby later learns that Daisy is Nick’s cousin, therefore he later becomes good friends with Nick to try to become closer to Daisy. After Daisy’s husband finds out about Daisy and Gatsby’s affair, he confronts them, but Daisy decides that she loves Gatsby. Later, Daisy is driving Gatsby’s car and hit and murders a woman; the woman’s husband figures out that the car was Jay Gatsby’s car and he murders Gatsby in his own home. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) is best interpreted by using a Marxists reading strategy.