F. Scott Fitzgerald and Great Gatsby

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 his time or on himself as a prototypical representative." Scott Fitzgerald: (http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/fitzgeraldbio.html).He was known to be a romantic and a tragic figure as well as a brilliant writer who achieved success with his first novel, This Side of Paradise. He participated in the glamorous expatriate life in France in the 1920s and then received a series of professional and personals in the 1930s.

It was the Fitzgerald legend that attracted lot of readers to his work, since he wrote four novels between he 1920s and the 1940s. At the time he died, he had been writing an amazing Hollywood novel, the last tycoon. Fitzgerald was not exactly a playboy of American literature, though some of his fans liked to think of him as a careless writer.

His background hardly reveals being the source of his success, since his father came from tired, old stock roots in Maryland and was an avid drinker, yet he taught the best of manners to this only son, Scott. His mother's family had migrated from Ireland in 1843 and managed to build an adequate grocery store in St. Paul.

His sense of coming from two widely different Celtic strains had developed an early inferiority complex in a family where, half the black Irish had the money and looked down on the Maryland side of the family, who had the right 'breeding'. His feelings for his parents was strained and complicated, while he could hardly respect his father. At an early age his interest in the opposite sex developed, which was more like a game for him where he cited only one winner.

By the time his first novel appeared, he was already engaged to marry, Zelda Sayre of Montgomery, Alabama; the daughter of a judge and a lady with an unconventional behavior. Even though she had claimed in her statement that the last thing she wanted to think about were kitchen, pots and pans, since her main concern was to stay in the glamorous society. (F. Scott Fitzgerald's Biography: (http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/fitzgeraldbio.html) Fitzgerald lived a colourful life with Zelda with a lot of parties and money spending.

It reveals to be the turning point in his life, since at the time they met, she had been an aspiring writer herself. The release of his first book gained him a lot of reviews and they both celebrated the success extensively. The Great Gatsby, novel with a three-year procession was published in 1925. Before releasing the novel, Fitzgerald had preceded the book with his short stories, a way of testing his materials.

The gesture of the theme and the characters can be observed in his Dice, Brass Knuckles and Guitar' (1923), 'winter Dreams' (1922) and 'The Sensible Thing' (1924). This particular novel was "developed with layers of draft and achieved its ultimate brilliance when Fitzgerald revised and rewrote it in the galley proofs." (The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald 'Preface' pg: ix). Though the book received outstanding reviews, it didn't manage to make the amount Fitzgerald had expected.

The Great Gatsby, originally known as, Jay Gatsby, was claimed as the self-made personage and the embodiment of America's Dream. (The great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: (http://www.enotes.com/great-gatsby/6590).Nick Carraway, the narrator of the story, discovered that Gatsby's parents were poor farmers, whom he had never accepted. It represents a notable resemblance to Fitzgerald's own life, while the story has been taken over the role of Nick narrating the story; in some ways verifying a double side of Fitzgerald.

At that time his drunken state was being observed, but he didn't write the book while he was drunk. While he had written in his short story 'the winter dreams', about his feelings of a lost youth, he also gets into the novel his sense of social inadequacy and his emotion of hurt when the dream is betrayed. As Fitzgerald quotes, " the whole idea of Gatsby is the unfairness of a poor young man not being able to marry a girl with money.

This theme comes up again and again, because I lived it." (F. Scott Fitzgeralds' The Great Gatsby: A Literary Reference, by Matthew Bruccoli, chapter 1, pg: 10). Fitzgerald had almost lost Zelda because of lack of money, but he managed to win her back. To support his expensive life style with Zelda, he often interrupted his work on his novels and wrote short stories, which brought him high fees from famous magazines.

(F (rancis) Scott (Key) Fitzgerald (1896-1940): (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/fsfitzg.htm).Fitzgerald's stormy relationship with Zelda is mentioned in his novel, The Crack Up (1945). He started working as the Hollywood screenwriter for a short while in 1927 and then joined again in 1930- 1932. During the time, when he was drinking heavily and was beginning to lose his illusions, he even started believing that his books had not been produced first- rate.

Even though he had something in The Great Gatsby which he had not done in his any other novel. He had pushed his sense of experience away from the middle ground of probability towards two kinds of distortions. The dreamer distorted becomes Gatsby, a man whose hopelessly vulgar state allows him an eternal yearning for a meretricious beauty. The rich man distorted becomes Tom Buchanan, whose ruthlessness preserves him from worldly comfort.

Both the men, Gatsby and Buchanan, are known to be without conscious, since they are both intent on trying to keep from the other. "Both the caricature are Fitzgeralds' own experience, his own sense of.