Themes in Work of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Following the publication of his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald proclaimed his belief that "'an author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward'" (Bruccoli 12). While Fitzgerald was being somewhat facetious in this remark, he also revealed a central motivation for his literary creations: the desire to represent the attitudes, values, and aspirations of his generation. Fitzgerald succeeded in all three goals, becoming the literary spokesman for the Jazz Age and creating a body of work admired for its craftsmanship and brilliant social insights. While not a prodigious author--he completed only four novels during his career--Fitzgerald is regarded today as one of the preeminent writers of the Lost Generation.

This Side of Paradise was essentially autobiographical, based on Fitzgerald's college years at Princeton. In his work, he established himself as "the chief historian of the emergent debutantes and playboys . . . devoted to a romantic portrayal of their adventures" (Goldhurst 32). Like many of his contemporaries, Fitzgerald emphasized the need to rely on immediate, personal experiences as the legitimate source of artistic expression. In This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald attempted the delicate balancing act of re-creating perso

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d readers. Of course, part of Fitzgerald's enduring popularity is owing to his glamorous, extravagant lifestyle, and to his highly romanticized relationship with his wife Zelda. The public could not know of his constant financial worries, which were alleviated time and time again by the understanding Perkins. Perhaps that knowledge merely would have enhanced the Fitzgerald mystique, which exists outside the body of work produced by the author. But in creating Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald managed to enhance the mystique and ensure for them both an enduring place in American literature. The Great Gatsby has become "firmly fixed in popular culture, in academic evaluation of literary achievement, and--perhaps most telling and most important--in the literature of other writers" (Bruccoli 23). Gatsby is the character most closely associated with glamor and romanticism of Fitzgerald's own life--and with the themes of disillusionment and loss of innocence that pervade all of Fitzgerald's work. Fitzgerald's work, The Great Gatsby in particular, embodied not only the views of the Lost Generation, but also the sense of lost innocence that has become a dominant theme in American art since the 1920s. Whether that innocent time ever existed,
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Approximate Word count = 2842
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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