American Literature

F. Scott Fitzgerald and

The Great Gatsby

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

Biographical Information on F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940):

Fitzgerald once wrote in a series of famous essays called The Crack Up, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

Everything about Fitzgerald is touched by this idea & he shows this in his two main characters, Nick Carroway and Jay Gatsby in the novel The Great Gatsby.

What’s reality with Fitzgerald’s life?

How are Fitzgerald and his characters similar?

What’s fiction in The Great Gatsby?

All lived during the same time period – 1920’s in New York City.

All loved and hated money.

Born in Minnesota, Fitzgerald’s Family was socially prominent and genteelly poor. Fitzgerald comes from a well-to-do father & a working-class mother.

Nick comes from a well-to-do midwestern family. Gatsby comes from a poor, farming family.

All have a prestigious college connection:

Fitzgerald attended, but flunked out of Princeton.

Gatsby lies about graduating from Oxford, and Nick graduates from Yale.

All three serve in military.

Fitzgerald (22) enlisted in the army during WWI, but never served. However, while stationed in Montgomery, Alabama, he met 17-year-old Miss Zelda Sayre.

Both Gatsby and Nick serve in the military.

All fall in love with women who won’t marry them.

Fitzgerald eventually earned fame and money after publishing his first book and Zelda decided she could marry him.

Gatsby went off to war and by the time he returned the love of his life had been promised to someone else.

Nick? You’ll have to read the book.

All are attracted to the life of the very rich.

Rumors circulated of Fitzgerald and his wife swimming in public fountains in NYC, riding to parties on the hoods of taxis, fighting with waiters, and dancing on dining tables.

Nick is born into wealth, but Gatsby, after he becomes successful, also becomes a part of high society.

Gatsby's mansion in the film version of 1974

All come to hate the empty lifestyle of the wealthy.

Even while living the wild life of the Roaring Twenties, Fitzgerald hated the falseness and hypocrisy and cruelty of that life. Fitzgerald lived a dazzling life full of parties, yet part of him knew that this sort of life was a complete sham.

Nick will eventually become disillusioned with the pretense of life of Long Island Society and will return to the Midwest- where he supposedly writes the book The Great Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald was disciplined as a writer, but was often unable to exercise that control. In 1925, however, Fitzgerald managed to complete The Great Gatsby.•“Fitzgerald's works detailing themes of idealistic aspiration -- most notably, The Great Gatsby -- continue to stand as testimony to one of the foremost American novelists of the early twentieth century.” Novel Guide Biography

Fitzgerald’s eventual downfall.

Fitzgerald loved his wife Zelda more than anything, but also resented her for destroying his talent. In the 1930’s Zelda began to suffer a series of mental breakdowns while his own alcoholism and failures of his writings plagued Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald’s eventual downfall.

In Nov 1940, Fitzgerald suffered a heart attack and a 2nd one a month later. At the age of 44, Fitzgerald died on Dec. 21, 1940, in California.

Themes of the novel:

All this Doubleness Fitzgerald puts into the novel you are about to read, The Great Gatsby.

The novel depicts the stridency of an age of glittering innocence, but also portrays the hollowness of the American worship of riches and the unending American dreams of love, splendor, and gratified desire.