Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Benjamin Button
F. Scott Fitzgerald is commonly thought of as one the 20th century's greatest writers and is best known for his reflections on the society of the 1920's; named the "Jazz Age" by Fitzgerald himself. But one of his short stories, published in Colliers magazine in 1922 was a purely fictional account of a remarkable man named Benjamin Button. In his The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fitzgerald examines a number of themes including a family's place in society, how individuals refuse to accept reality and live in a state of denial, and even a person's place within the family structure. But the theme that was presented repeatedly by Fitzgerald was the concept of age and how it affects a person's attitudes and relationships in the world.
Benjamin Button is remarkable in so much as he is born in 1860 as a 70-year-old man, and as time progresses forward, Benjamin ages backward. In others words, he was born a 70-year-old man, with the knowledge and attitudes of one, but twenty years later Benjamin was a 50-year-old man. This continues through the next seventy years with a number of interesting situations happening along the way. And as Benjamin ages backwards, his attitudes and relationships change in interesting ways. When Benjamin first comes...
However, Benjamin's most enjoyable relationship is that with his grandfather. Although they were, as Fitzgerald stated, "so far apart in age and experience," they would sit "like old cronies, discuss[ing] with tireless monotony the slow events of the day." (Fitzgerald, 1, III) Even though Benjamin was just born, because he was already a 70-year-old, he could relate better to another old man than to his parents or other children.
When Benjamin reaches the eighteenth year after his birth, he has the appearance of a 50-year-old man and allows people to believe that he is his father's brother. In this guise, Benjamin begins a relationship with a young woman, Hildegarde Moncrief, who is attracted to older men. They soon marry and Benjamin, no longer seeking the company of the elderly, assumes his role as head of his household and an excellent provider. In fact, in the fifteen years after his marriage to Hildegarde, "the family fortune doubled-- and this was due largely to the younger member of the firm [Benjamin]." (Fitzgerald, 1, VII) As Benjamin becomes a middle aged man, he assumes the role of the middle aged man. But as…
References
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. (1922). The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Retrieved from http://www.readbookonline.net/read/690/10628/
Scott Fitzgerald and the Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald, born on the 24th of Sept 1896, was one of the greatest writers, who was well-known for being a writer of his own time. He lived in a room covered with clocks and calendars while the years ticket away his own career followed the pattern of the nation with his first fiction blooming in 1920s. "His fictions did more then report on
Prohibition Impact American Authors F. Scott Fitzgerald Ernest Hemingway Prohibition and the roaring 20s: The novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemmingway The consumption of alcohol defines the works of both F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. The quintessential Fitzgerald heroine is the flapper -- the short-haired, carefree, hard-drinking heroine of works such as Tender is the Night and the Great Gatsby. The iconic 'Hemingway man' of The Sun Also Rises and
William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Doris Lessing An author's writing style is like a voice or a fingerprint: unique to that individual and impossible to replicate. There is no such thing as a "better" or a "worse" writing style, although it is possible to prefer one writing style over another, just as one might prefer blue eyes over brown, or soft melodious voices over rough, gravelly-sounding ones. Three great
doubt F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote one of the most captivating novels about the American Dream and the decaying American mentality when he penned the Great Gatsby. Julie Evans points out how the author seems to have become a victim of this kind of mentality with his work and his life, dying a "broken alcoholic" (Evans). Nevertheless, Fitzgerald should be remembered not for how he died but what he wrote
Winter Dreams" of F. Scott Fitzgerald and "Flowering Judas of Katherine Anne Porter" Cool. Dispassionate. Masters of the art of literary artifice, lies, and characters who wear masks rather than their true selves. Although one author deploys an almost newspaper-like dispassionate style, and the other is more poetic in her use of the language, both F. Scott Fitzgerald and Katherine Anne Porter have been called by these appellations because of
Gatsby had built up this incredible illusion of what Daisy really was, and had gone off the deep end in throwing himself after her. Weinstein (p. 25) quotes from pages 102-103 of the novel: "There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion." It is typical of Fitzgerald to