Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was a world renowned author, particularly known for his remarkable novel The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s early life was filled with experiences that shaped him to be the man that he later became. His early life includes his family and his schooling, both of which gave him values and traditions to follow. Fitzgerald’s later life contained hardships, illness and the production of his own family. The factors involved in his later life aided him in composing his most well-known novels with their influence. Lastly, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s list of works is an important aspect in understanding his life and personality. His novels and short stories were all written at various moments in Fitzgerald’s life, while all have the influence of unique factors surrounding his life. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a successful author whose stories have remained universally read and relevant today.
Early Life
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s early life was filled with moments that allowed him to realize who he was as a person, and as a writer. Fitzgerald was born on September 24th, 1896 to Edward and Mary (www.sc.edu). His father was an American with extreme pride in his family’s past while his mother, Mary, was raised with her Irish parents’ traditions and culture (www.sc.edu). Both of Fitzgerald’s parents were strict Catholics which influences Fitzgerald’s value in religion (www.sc.edu). Due to his father’s aristocracy and his mother’s wealthy inheritance, Fitzgerald was raised in a wealthy, middle class family (www.sc.edu). F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing career began at St. Paul Academy where he began writing for the school’s newspaper (www.pbs.org). After attending St. Paul Academy, his schooling career spread to the Newman Catholic Pr...
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...itzgerald is his short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” published in 1922 which has its own film adaptation as well (www.editoreric.com). He also published additional stories fundamental to his life including Flappers and Philosophers, a collection of short stories, The Beautiful and Damned, and The Last Tycoon which was a novel that was uncompleted and published after Fitzgerald’s death in 1940 (www.shmoop.com). Fitzgerald’s novels were written with a variety of influences including his religion, his romance with his wife and the Roaring Twenties. However, the majority of his influences came from Fitzgerald’s perseverance and determination to provide for his family as he had to write to earn an income (www.sc.edu). Although F. Scott Fitzgerald was not one of the most well-paid or distinguished authors of his time, his works are widely admired today.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “I am not a great man, but sometimes I think the impersonal and objective quality of my talent, and the sacrifices of it, in pieces, to preserve its essential value has some sort of epic grandeur” (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” St. James). Fitzgerald had heavy drinking problems and faced many financial failures throughout his life of writing but has proved to be gifted in many ways of writing. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was a short story writer, an essayist, and a novelist that was most famous during the Jazz Age of the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald, also known under his writer’s name, F. Scott Fitzgerald, is revered as a famous American novelist for his writing masterpieces in the 1920’s and 1930’s. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about his extravagant lifestyle in America that his wife, Zelda, their friends, and him lived during that era. In fact, a lot of his novels and essays were based off of real-life situations with exaggerated plots and twists. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels were the readers looking glass into his tragic life that resulted in sad endings in his books, and ultimately his own life. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in a nice neighborhood, but growing up, he wasn’t privileged.
Eble, Kenneth. “F. Scott Fitzgerald. Chap 5, Sec 3. The Great Gatsby” in Twayne’s United States Authors Series Online. New York: GK Hall, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Gale Group Database. Father Ryan High School Library, Nashville TN. 6 May 2004
Certain authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, wanted to reflect the horrors that the world had experienced not a decade ago. In 1914, one of the most destructive and pointless wars in history plagued the world: World War I. This war destroyed a whole generation of young men, something one would refer to as the “Lost Generation”. Modernism was a time that allowed the barbarity of the war to simmer down and eventually, disappear altogether. One such author that thrived in this period was F. Scott Fitzgerald, a young poet and author who considered himself the best of his time. One could say that this self-absorption was what fueled his drive to be the most famous modernist the world had seen. As The New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean mentions in her literary summary of Fitzgerald’s works, “I didn’t know till fifteen that there was anyone in the world except me, and it cost me plenty” (Orlean xi). One of the key factors that influenced and shaped Fitzgerald’s writing was World War I, with one of his most famous novels, This Side Of Paradise, being published directly after the war in 1920. Yet his most famous writing was the book, The Great Gatsby, a novel about striving to achieve the American dream, except finding out when succeeding that this dream was not a desire at all. Fitzgerald himself lived a life full of partying and traveling the world. According to the Norton Anthology of American Literature, “In the 1920’s and 1930’s F. Scott Fitzgerald was equally equally famous as a writer and as a celebrity author whose lifestyle seemed to symbolize the two decades; in the 1920’s he stood for all-night partying, drinking, and the pursuit of pleasure while in the 1930’s he stood for the gloomy aftermath of excess” (Baym 2124). A fur...
“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 Key, after whom he was named” (F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography). The other half the time he acted as “straight 1850 potato-famine Irish” (F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography). Consequently, he had typically indecisive feelings about American life, which seemed to him at once “vulgar and dazzlingly promising” (F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography). This idea is expressed in much of Fitzgerald’s writing. From an early age he had an “intensely romantic imagination” (F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography); he longed for a life of passion, fame and luxury.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. He was the author of The Great Gatsby and was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, and died on December 21, 1940 in Hollywood, California. Fitzgerald published the book The Great Gatsby on April 10, 1925, among other books like The Other Side of Paradise, another of Fitzgerald’s successes when living which permitted him to marry the woman he loved. Although The Great Gatsby was not much of a success during his time it became a very popular novel that appropriately portrayed the Jazz Age also known as the Roaring Twenties later in time. The author’s purpose for the book was to inform and at the same time entertain the audience of what the Jazz Age was mainly about and peoples
and heroism in the face of all of these obstacles to do what he was
Doreski, C. K. "Fitzgerald, F. Scott 1896—1940." American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies, Retrospective Supplement 1. Ed. A. Walton Litz and Molly Weigel. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998. 97-120. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is an absurd story, whether considered as romance, melodrama, or plain record of New York high life. The occasional insights into character stand out as very green oases on an arid desert of waste paper. Throughout the first half of the book the author shadows his leading character in mystery, but when in the latter part he unfolds his life story it is difficult to find the brains, the cleverness, and the glamour that one might expect of a main character.
“American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald rose to prominence as a chronicler of the Jazz Age” (History Staff). F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers who changed America through his influential and inspirational literature. Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, gave him instant fame and success. However, other novels, such as Tender is the Night, were considered to be a disappointment. “From his rise to prominence as a promising young novelist, to his free-wheeling lifestyle in Europe, to his death in obscurity and re-evaluation by critics, his life is known to aspiring writers worldwide, and is a source of equal parts inspiration and sympathy” (Definitive Touch). Fitzgerald lived a life full of hardships and adversities. His personal life consisted of an ongoing alcohol addiction and his struggles grew worse as he watched his wife Zelda deteriorate with mental illness. The American Icon turned to writing short stories, magazine
Raleigh, John Henry. "F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: Legendary Bases and Allegorical Significances." F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Arthur Mizener. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963. 99-103.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s visionary writing style during the early twentieth century revolutionized a new style for other writers. “Theme is most dramatically expressed through character, and Fitzgerald used the people he created to convey his personal vision of the world” (Keshmiri 2). As Keshmiri states, Fitzgerald, unlike many other writers at the time, expresses his stories through the development of the characters. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and The Beautiful and the Damned illustrate the many flaws of human nature and how these flaws contribute to the downfall of the characters through their obsession with status, their inability to accept reality, and the use of alcohol.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a tragedy filled with love, loss, and betrayal. Fitzgerald paints us a beautiful picture of the events in this tale through complex wording. While his story and word usage may be complex, his character are not as complex as they appear. Their outward appearance may fool a reader because deep down they fit many popular archetypes. From the narcissistic jock type to the outsider, each one of Fitzgerald’s main characters can fit a certain archetype.
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 one of the most compelling twentieth century writers, (Curnutt, 2004). The year 1925 marks the year of the publication of Fitzgerald’s most credited novel, The Great Gatsby (Bruccoli, 1985). With its critiques of materialism, love and the American Dream (Berman, 1996), this dramatic idyllic novel, (Harvey, 1957), although poorly received at first, is now highly regarded as Fitzgerald’s finest work (Rohrkemper, 1985) and is his publisher, Scribner 's most popular title, (Donahue, 2013). The novel achieved it’s status as one of the most influential novels in American history around the nineteen fifties and sixties, over ten years after Fitzgerald 's passing, (Ibid, 1985)