A sad song coming from the bottom of the heart

--about Fitzgerald, the American dream and his master piece, <The Great Gatsby>

One

Francis Scott Fitzgerald is a writer of his unique personality and characteristics in the 20^th century American literature world. He published his first novel < This Side of Paradise> in 1920 and was known from then on when he was younger than 24 years. Then in a short period of only a few years, he published another two novels, which were <The beautiful and damned> in 1922 and <The Great Gatsby> in 1925 and also quite a few short pieces as well, which made him the red star of contemporary American literature, by which time he did not reach his 30s even. For many years afterwards, he did not publish any significant piece at all, which gave people a feeling that he had run out of wits. Especially when his fourth novel <Tender Is the Night> did not receive any applause from the literature circle, he himself even began to think that he had really ran out of talent and inspiration to write. Therefore, he quitted writing novels and wrote screen plays for Hollywood instead for a living, and his works then were not mentioned by people at all, not to say loved. This situation lasted quite a long time before he collected his shattered confidence and began to write another great novel <The Last Tycoon>, which was about Hollywood, while all of a sudden; he died of heart-attack at the age of 44 in December 1940. And this unfinished work to some extent was a symbol of his unfulfilled literary career.

However, about 10 years later, Fitzgerald gained popularity in the American literary circle again: He was not only recognized as the best author whose works represent the “Noisy Jazz Music Times” of America, but also one of the major American writers during the 2 world wars.

Two

The reason why Fitzgerald was such an expert at portraying 20^th century American society so lively, artfully and sinfully is that he himself belonged to this society as well. He was part of this American dream. As a matter of fact, many of the plots in his novels came from his own experience and observations, and the people he portrayed in his works also came from himself and the people around him. He was part of the 0^th century and represented a certain characteristic of this time. He had a clear understanding and view about this time he belonged to.

Fitzgerald was born in a business family which was going through bad luck in St Polo Minnesota in 1896. His fathers career failure cast a shadow in little Fitzgerald’s heart, which made this sensitive kid “living on the very edge of the modernist street” aware of how important money was at too early an age. Thanks to his uncle, little Fitzgerald entered the upper class as a kid and went to boarding school for good education and even went to the famous Princeton University in 1914, who became the poor student among the rich classmates. This experience gave him an opportunity to get to know the life of rich people well; especially the psychological status and life styles of their children and this knowledge became an prompting desire of him to become successful and wealthy. This talented young man went to Princeton only because this University had a well known student magazine and literature club, which could actually provide a stage for him to perform his literary intelligence.

Fitzgerald did not do well in school works while was good at socializing and writing. He even fell in love with a rich young lady from Chicago, while did not get the love of the lady because of his poor family status. During the First World War, he also joined the army as many young people from middle class families. However, he never went to the frontiers in Europe and stayed in American, taking the responsibility of a deputy captain in the training camps. During this time, he wrote his first novel <The Romantic Ego centrist> using his spare time, which the publishing companies refused to publish. At this time, he fell in love with the daughter of the rich judge of Mongmarie’s higher court, and he, on the contrary, was penniless. Therefore, immediately after he completed his duty in the army in 1919, he left for New York to realize his American dream and struggle for the coming true of becoming Mr. Money. However, he could not find a job relating to literature or become a correspondent; he worked in the beginning as a Advertisement editor earning 90 dollars instead. Fitzgerald was very confident in his own talent in writing and quitted this job not long after and made up his mind to be a writer and propose to the daughter of the rich Judge, without success again this time. Therefore, he used a whole long and desperate summer to write a novel, not a love letter. He was successful this time, his novel <This side of Paradise> won him great success and fortune as well. However, this also meant that he had become another person. He had money now and married that rich daughter a year later.

The success of <This Side of Paradise> made him one of the rich people and he lived his life in big cities like New York, Paris, which as if showed that he had realized his American dream. He was not satisfied. He decided to write a novel to reveal the real characteristics and life of the upper class. His novel <The Beautiful and Damned> was meant to express this idea while was not successful as expected for the authors lack of writing arts and shallowness of thought. Fitzgerald was not defeated, instead, he put all his heart to another novel, which represented the peak of his literary career, showing the readers his depth of thought and perfection of writing skills, which was <The Great Gatsby>.

Three

As soon as <The Great Gatsby> was published, T.S.Eliot the famous poet and literature critic sang highly of it, calling it the first major step in American novel history after Henry James. Gertrude Stein, who was the leader of American literary circle at that time said <The Great Gatsby> re-presented the society of that particular time so vividly that it could be classified as one of the top literary works ever appeared in human history.

In short, <The Great Gatsby> showed to its readers a powerful America with high economic growth and prosperity during the First World War, where although the polarity between the rich and the poor was becoming greater and greater, close to the poor and desperate “ash valley”, numerous large sky scrapers were built in which people lived an extravagant life. Here in this world, the boldest dreams seemed to be able to be realized, the most lavishing life style seemed to be able to be maintained and the most wasteful feast seemed to be able to last for ever. The main character Gatsby was considered GREAT only because he rose from a penniless young man to a millionaire in just a few years.

However, Gatsby’s American dream was not realized yet even though he had become a rich man. He was still searching and pursuing. As a matter of fact, all those years of hard work and endless endeavors which brought him great fortune, big houses, and the endless extravagant parties was for one purpose only-to take back the heart of Daisy, whose love he had not been able to get years ago. According to the American dream logic, money and beautiful women were always connected. With the wealth he had then, Gatsby was obviously able to have any woman as beautiful as daisy, or even more beautiful and elegant ones. However, for Gatsby the stubborn man, anyone or even the more beautiful one or better one could not substitute the special one. To him, Daisy was not only the first elegant lady he met, more importantly, she stood for the upper class, the highest social status and everything beautiful in one’s life which deserved all his endeavors-though he was very clear that all these had to be bought at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars. In other words, this Daisy that Gatsby had been dreaming of was actually the spiritual figure in his heart, as portrayed in the sixth chapter of the novel, “The ideal lady that bloomed for him like a rose”. This pursues, was which made Gatsby great, and this very same pursue, led to his tragic life in the end as well.

Compared with the even stubborn love he had towards Daisy, the latter was a shallow, artificial and moody woman whose beauty, whose magic charms together with sweet and luring voice was only a symbol of money, which could be perceived from the seventh chapter of the novel. She first married Tom, who she did not love at all and then, like many upper class women, had a few extra marriage affairs. When the once penniless admirer of her Gatsby, who she refused ruthlessly because of his poor situations then, appeared before her again a man of more money than Tom, she even began to think of leaving Tom and going with Gatsby! All her decisions and everything she does was no exceptionably driven by her desire for money.

A lot of people tended to believe that once you have a lot of money, your American dream has been realized, which a mistake Gatsby also made. David Riesman, socialist, once gave an example about dressing to illustrate the status differences in America, which might not be so obvious in the surface but definitely clear in the core. A lot of visitors to American often think that saleswomen, prostitutes and film stars dress more or less the same, while Americans know clearly about the differences. People ought to understand that the difference might be tiny, but are completely different. In the society that time, the differences were not only between wealth, but also between NEW wealth and TRADITIONAL wealth, fixed asset and floating asset, west and east…which Tom was very clear about.

Therefore, when Tom met Gatsby, he firstly did not give a shit to Gatsby who was from the west and was New Money. When he got to know that Gatsby had a certain relation with Daisy, he immediately began to investigate the sources of Gatsby’s wealth. Therefore when the three of them sat together, Tom told Daisy about Gatsby’s way of earning money, which struck Daisy in the right place because she was also from a traditional wealthy family which did not care much about new money at all. In this battle of choosing the RIGHT man, Daisy chose Tom again, actually she chose the traditional and decent fortune that Tom represented. Gatsby was still not aware of this difference. His dream of getting the love of Daisy still haunted him. When Daisy drove into someone, Gatsby made cover for her. He sent her home and stayed outside the whole night to make sure she was safe, the second day of the car accident, he was still concerned about Daisy and stayed home the whole day waiting for her phone…all these led to his tragedy in the end. While at the same time when Gatsby was worried and concerned, Daisy had made up with Tom and left with him. Her memories about Gatsby, together with her other flirting and filthy affairs, disappeared totally.

Four

Fitzgerald was a significant writer in American literary circle. He was a genius bestowed with the gift to portray his time in a way that few writers could compare. His master piece <The Great Gatsby> was amongst the few novels that could be admired by all classes, if we have to put people into different classes. It was firstly a vivid story for readers to read through at one breath because it succeeds in grasping the attention and interest of people with its incomparable plots. And if readers pay a little bit more thought into this work, they would easily find that this is actually a work containing extremely deep and rich literary meanings. It describes a whole time and the breaking of the greatest dream of this time to its readers. Then a lot of readers, like me myself, can not help to read it again and once again to find the true meanings that are contained inside the story. It is a book learners of the English language and American culture and society can not miss. Anyone who is interested in 20^th century American literature and society ought to read it several times, which is worthy of the time and going to be most rewarding to them.