F. Scott Fitzgerald was born into a Catholic family in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896. Educated in private prep schools and then at Princeton until 1917, when he enlisted in the army because he feared he wouldn’t graduate , he was a middle-class, Midwestern boy who coveted the wonders of the East. When he married Zelda Sayre, a southern, upper-class daughter of a wealthy Alabama Supreme Court judge , Fitzgerald thought he had it all. The couple lived the high life, moving back and forth between Paris, the Riviera, and New York, but after a while Fitzgerald became an old name and his money dwindled. After Zelda had her first mental breakdown in April 1930, Fitzgerald’s life went spiraling downhill.
The Author known as, Scott Fitzgerald is considered a notable writer in the Jazz Age time period for his novels, “short stories” such as “The Great Gatsby.” Throughout the life of Scott Fitzgerald his works have proven to be of high merit that have impacted the world of literature In 1898 at Saint Paul, Minnesota, born into a middle-upper class family, Fitzgerald was named after his famous second cousin Francis Scott Key but he finally went by the familiar name Scott Fitzgerald. Also he was named after his late sister, Louise Scott, one of two sisters who died shortly before his birth. "Well, three months before I was born my mother lost her other two children ... I think I started then to be a writer." His parents were Mollie (McQuillan) and Edward Fitzgerald.
I fell in love with Edgar Allan Poe when I first read his story The Raven, during my freshman year language class. Edgar was born January 19th, 1809 in Boston Massachusetts to Elizabeth and David Poe. Being an infant Edgar was moved vigorously because of his parents professions of traveling actors. The money brought in was very scarce and did not please his father David. At the age of two Edgars father abandoned the family leaving his mother Elizabeth alone with Edgar, his infant sister Rosalie, and his older brother Henry.
We notice a few lives quite clearly through a self-portrait, a song, or even a book. Sometimes it isn’t as intentional as the artist meant it to be. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses events from his life so thoroughly in his novel, The Great Gatsby, leading us to believe he wrote the novel as a sort of autobiography emphasizing his interesting life and his relationship with his wife. Fitzgerald was ambitious at a young age, and seemed to always know he’d have a place in the world. As described in PBS’s biography of Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, September 24th, 1896, his father a failed wicker furniture salesman and his mother an Irish immigrant by the name of Mary (Mollie) McQuillan with a large inheritance (PBS).
Although, not everyone would guess that he died believing himself a failure. Best known for his novel The Great Gatsby, which chronicled the 1920s in America, and also became a present day required read for high-school students (as many would know). He depicted this era, as he crowned the term "The Jazz Age", as a time of ambition, extravagance, and wealth. He and his wife Zelda lived a life of prestige and luxury for nearly the entire decade. However, he also suffered from years of toil.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896. According to the University of South Carolina, Fitzgerald is vaguely related to the author of the National Anthem and was named after him. Fitzgerald’s given names could indicate that his parents took pride in his father’s ancestry. His father, Edward, was from Maryland but he had a strong devotion to the Old South and its views. Fitzgerald’s mother, Mary McQuillan, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul.
She was wild, known around the college campuses, highly desired, and wasn’t willing to settle. When Fitzgerald proposed to Zelda, she declined until he was financially stable to maintain her lifestyle. Zelda personifies the love interests of F. Scott Fitzgerald novels, as Daisy, The Great Gatsby, and Judy Jones, Winter Dreams. All three women were beautiful, unattainable, and desired by many. They all cared more about their potential husband’s bank account, more than actually being in love with them.
F. Scott Fitzgerald revolutionized American literature through his accurate portrayal of the 1920’s. Fitzgerald was an amazing writer who influenced the life of many and gave the American people a peek into the somewhat mysterious world of the roaring twenties. Fitzgerald started as a poor man and ended his life as a wealthy man, but never seemed to find his place. “He had the ability to experience the lifestyle of the wealthy from an insider's perspective, yet never felt a part of this click and always felt [like] the outsider” (EXPLORING Novels). Providing Fitzgerald with these unique experiences helped him develop his writing style, many critics of his work called it double vision or having more than one way of seeing life.
Born on July 3, 1883, Franz Kafka was the son of a wealthy Jewish family in Prague. By the time Franz was six, his two younger brothers Georg and Heinrich died during childbirth, leaving him as the only son in the Kafka family (“Franz Kafka”, 2014). His mother’s name was Julie; she was devoted to making their home perfect and lacked the understanding that her son wanted to be a writer. Kafka’s father, Hermann, was a forceful man with whom Kafka had a difficult and tumultuous relationship. Franz was a very intelligent child and earned the admiration of his teachers and peers during his high... ... middle of paper ... ... Reading Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis gave me a myriad of emotions: disgust, amusement, and confusion.
Guy de Maupassant was a successfully popular writer during his era. Born on August 5, 1850 in Dieppe, France, he grew up amongst his family in his birthplace of Normandy. Although his plentiful short stories could not cover up his families happy façade. Cracks emerged due to Guys father’s constant affairs that led to a permanent separation between the couple at the tender age of eleven. The divorce left its mark on Guy where he became frightened of marriage and perceived the men in his stories as wrongful or ridiculous.