How does F. Scott Fitzgerald's life compare to that of his characters in "The Great Gatsby"?
Uploaded by jamee13 on Sep 04, 2002
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was a very talented writer whose work was not truly appreciated until after his death. People now see that his work is passionate, heartfelt, and very realistic. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life compares to a myriad of his characters in The Great Gatsby.
Passion - the word applies to an emotion that is deeply stirring. Many of the things in Fitzgerald’s life stirred his emotions and brought about his very passionate writing. Fitzgerald has a very romantic side which he reflects through his characters: “Like the central character of his novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald had an intensely romantic imagination, what he once called ‘a heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,’ and he charged into experience determined to realize those promises”(http:www.novelguides.com/). Many of his books have similar plots: “This is Fitzgerald’s first attempt to create his dream of the promises of American life and of the kind of man who could realize them”(http:www.novelguides.com/). In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby he stereotypes the upper class to be snobbish and selfish. This shows that he had a negative opinion of upper class people and based his descriptions on his opinions. “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves.”(Doreski 98). The passion intertwined throughout his writing makes it extraordinary.
Fitzgerald outwardly expressed some of his deepest feelings in his work. In all literature, the author’s personal life has a tremendous effect on their writing. Reading closely will show that none of the women in The Great Gatsby were honest or sincere. Many believe that losing his first love Ginevra King soured his thoughts on women: “He fell in love with Ginevra King, one of the beauties of her generation. However he lost Ginevra and flunked out of Princeton”(http://www.novelguides.com/). Fitzgerald went to war in 1917 hoping to die, but being unsuccessful, he used this as part of Jay Gatsby’s life: “Then came the war old sport. It was a great relief, and I tried very hard to die, but I seemed...