Gatsby

Gatsby-biography Essay Dreaming The Impossible Dream:An autobiographical portrayal of F. Scott Fitzgerald as Jay Gatsby, in The Great GatsbyFrances Scott Key Fitzgerald, born September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, is seen today as one of the true great American novelists. Although he lived a life filled with alcoholism, despair, and lost-love, he managed to create the ultimate love story and seemed to pinpoint the American Dream in his classic novel, The Great Gatsby. In the novel, Jay Gatsby is the epitome of the self-made man, in which he dictates his entire life to climbing the social ladder in order to gain wealth, to ultimately win the love of a woman: something that proves to be unattainable. As it turns out, Gatsbys excessive extravagance and love of money, mixed with his obsession for a womans love, is actually the autobiographical portrayal of Fitzgerald. While attending Princeton University, Fitzgerald struggled immensely with his grades and spent most of his time catering to his social needs. He became quite involved with the Princeton Triangle Club, an undergraduate club which wrote and produced a lively musical comedy each fall, and performed it during the Christmas vacation in a dozen major cities across the country. Fitzgerald was also elected to Cottage, which was one of the big four clubs at Princeton. Its lavish weekend parties in impressive surroundings, which attracted girls from New York, Philadelphia and beyond, may well have provided the first grain of inspiration for Fitzgeralds portrayal of Jay Gatsbys fabulous parties on Long Island (Meyers, 27). Although Fitzgerald was a social butterfly while at Princeton, he never had any girlfriends. However, at a Christmas dance in St. Paul, MN during his sophomore year, he met Ginevra King, a sophisticated sixteen-year-old who was visiting her roommate, and immediately fell in love with her.Although Scott loved Ginevra to the point of infatuation, she was too self-absorbed to notice. Their one-sided romance persisted for the next two years. Fitzgerald would send hundreds of letters, but Ginevra, who thought them to be clever but unimportant, destroyed them in 1917. The following year, Ginevra sent Scott a letter that announced her marriage to a naval ensign. Just before Fitzgerald was to meet with Ginevra after a twenty-year absence, he proclaimed to his daughter, with mixed feelings of regret and nostalgia: She was the first girl I ever loved and have faithfully avoided seeing her up to this moment to keep the illusion perfect, because she ended up by throwing me over with the most sup reme boredom and indifference (Meyers, 30). Although heartbroken at the time, Fitzgerald answered Yeats crucial question Does the imagination dwell the most / Upon a woman lost or a woman won? by using his lost love as imaginative inspiration. For in his 1925 masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, he recreated the elusive, unattainable Ginevra as the beautiful and elegant Daisy Fay Buchanan. Throughout the novel, Fitzgerald described Daisy as an almost disembodied voice which, Gatsby realized at the end, was full of money. Fitzgerald wrote, her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget (Fitzgerald, 14). It should be noted that, Gatsbys ability, like Fitzgeralds, to keep that illusion perfect sustains his self-deceptive and ultimately self-destructive quest, with the help of his own fabulous money, to win Daisy back from her husband (Meyers, 30). Although Ginevra King was Fitzgeralds first true love, she certainly was not his last. In July 1918, while stationed in Montgomery, Alabama with the military, Scott met a gracious, soft-voiced girl named Zelda Sayre at a country club dance. Scott recalled that night that, she let her long hair hang down loose and wore a frilly dress that made her look younger than eighteen. She came from a prominent though not wealthy family and had just graduated from Sidney Lanier High School (Meyers, 42). Means To Tragic Ends (oedipus EssayJay Gatsby, like Fitzgerald, was fascinated by money and power, and impressed by glamour and beauty. However, they both knew that they could never fully belong to this prosperous and secure world, and that the goal of joining this careless class was an illusion. Fitzgeralds novel, shows what happens to people who pursue illusory American dreams, and how society (which they have rejected) fails to sustain them in their desperate hour.The Great Gatsby embodies the failure of romantic idealism. The hero achieves a great deal, but he loses the individual qualities that defined him at the beginning of the book and ends, as he lived, essentially alone (Meyers, 343). One of the dominant themes of The Great Gatsby was surely one of the prevailing themes of Scott Fitzgeralds life. Jay Gatsby became love-stricken and despite rejection, dedicated his entire life to winning back that elusive love, disregarding everything along the way that was moral, despite realizing at the end that reaching his goal was unachievable. Scott Fitzgerald had the same dream as Gatsby, for he yearned to join the ranks of the upper-class and accordingly obtain the love that had escaped him. It was an unfortunate outcome, one of hopelessness and despair. In reference to the theme, it is pointed out that, in all truth. . . The Great Gatsby is about something a long way removed from (Gatsbys) legend and popular reputation: it is about wanting better bread than can be made out of wheat and then finding each loaf rotten with decay, about the corruption beneath the glittering surface, about the soul of man in a society bent on dissolution (Priestly, 13). In Fitzgeralds description of Jay Gatsby, he has courageously explored and revealed his own character, leaving us not a glamorous legend, but a vivid record of self-examination. Fitzgeralds description of Gatsbys tenacious character and lust for wealth and women was so real and graphic, that it could only be expressed by someone who had actually endured such feelings.For in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses fiction to tell his own story reflecting on the superior and brutal qualities of the rich and on the impossibility of becoming one of them (Meyers, 123). Works Cited hDaiches, David. Critical Approaches to Literature. Longmann, New York: David Daiches, 1981. hFitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1970. hGuerin, Wilfred L. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1979. hMeyers, Jeffrey. Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1994. hPriestly, J.B.. The Bodley Head Scott Fitzgerald. London: The Bodley Head Ltd, 1958. BibliographyhDanziger, Marlies K. An Introduction to the Study of Literature. Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1961. hDiYanni, Robert. Literature fourth edition. Boston, MA: McGraw Hill, 1998. hLevin, Harry. Fitzgerald the makers of modern literature. Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions Books, 1941. hhttp://gatsby.cjb.net/ The Gatsby Online Researchhhttp://www.novelguides.com/ClassicNotes/Titles/gatsby/ Classic Notes OnlineWords/ Pages : 2,194 / 24