Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, reveals thin threads woven between himself and the novel, revealing the truth about a corrupted society filled with discontentment and superficiality. From marriages to women to an impossible dream, all these aspects of Fitzgerald’s life influences his work, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s novel quite closely resembles his own circumstances through his portrayal of the characters and the society of the 1920’s. Though Fitzgerald himself lived in a society of shallowness, he was able to portray that the emptiness in society would not bring anyone happiness. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the characters in The Great Gatsby to represent the people in his own life and to show that wealth causes corruption.
Mirroring his own unsuccessful love story, Fitzgerald incorporates the idea of failing marriages into his novel. ““Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to” (Fitzgerald 33).” Fitzgerald implies that marriage in the 1920’s was so corrupted by wealth that though the couples nearly hated each other, they still remained together for monetary and convenience purposes. Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda Sayre much like Daisy, married Fitzgerald for money. Until Fitzgerald started to become rich off his first novel, she had refused to marry him, much like how Daisy broke her promise to Gatsby and married Tom Buchanan. Zelda also cheated on Fitzgerald with a French naval aviator, mimicking Myrtle Wilson who pursued her own American Dream through having an affair with Tom (Willett).
Not only was Zelda portrayed in the novel but Fitzgerald himself identified a character similar to himself: Jay Gatsby. Both men spent lavishly on parties that had been held to impress the love of their ...

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... would fare in the real world, and how Zelda caused Fitzgerald great grief and strife. The novel reflects his own ideals and places them in society where they fail, as it is reality. His themes of a failing romance show he doesn’t believe in relationships or the like.

Works Cited
Bryfonski, Dedria, and Phyllis Carmel Mendelson. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Detroit: Gale Research, 1978. Print.
Kirby, Lisa A. "Shades of Passing: Teaching and Interrogating Identity in Roth's The Human Stain and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby." Philip Roth Studies 2.2 (2006): 151. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.
Will, Barbara. "The Great Gatsby and the Obscene Word." College Literature 32.4 (2005): 125. Literature Resource Center. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.
Willett, Erika. "F. Scott Fitzgerald and The American Dream." PBS. PBS, Web. 16 Jan. 2014.