Abstract
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, tells the tale of a young Midwestern university student who falls in and out of love, while eschewing his education for a life in the military. Fitzgerald’s book, a semi-autobiographical tale written around the time of the pursuit of his first love Zelda, combines varying literary styles with a powerful narrative voice to show the idleness and greed of American youth in the 1910s. In the world of This Side of Paradise, the youth of the nation is confused, lost and torn between love, obligation and opportunity, not really knowing where they fit in within the grand scheme of things. This novel will be explored through the characters of Amory and Rosalind, as well as the themes of identity and role confusion that occur throughout the novel.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, tells the tale of a young Midwestern university student who falls in and out of love, while eschewing his education for a life in the military. Throughout his journey, his life is constantly tested by the challenges of life in America at the beginning of the 20th century – things like World War I and Prohibition continually appear to shake up his ideas of what it means to be a man. Fitzgerald’s book, a semi-autobiographical tale written around the time of the pursuit of his first love Zelda, combines varying literary styles with a powerful narrative voice to show the idleness and greed of American youth in the 1910s. In the world of This Side of Paradise, the youth of the nation is confused, lost and torn between love, obligation and opportunity, not really knowing where they fit in within the grand scheme of things.
It is important to understand the cultural and historical context of This Side of Paradise, as it is a novel that is very overtly about the times in which it is set, and of the author himself. The First World War itself had already ravaged the youth of Fitzgerald’s generation by 1919, quickly disillusioning them of heroism in war, and creating a more cynical generation that inspired Amory’s aimlessness in the novel. The personal origins of the novel lie within F. Scott Fitzgerald’s courtship of his lover Zelda Sayre, who had broken up with him in 1919 after several years. Fitzgerald was heartbroken, moving back to St. Paul Minnesota in order to finish his first novel; his thinking was that, if he were able to get a novel published and succeed as a novelist, he might be able to win back Zelda. As soon as he received his notice that This Side of Paradise would be published, he returned to Zelda and convinced her to take him back, marrying him not long afterward (Broccoli 109).
The story of This Side of Paradise revolves around Amory Blaine, a young man growing up in the Midwest, and his adventures in school, war and love. Believing himself to have a great future, he goes to boarding school and moves on to Princeton University. Though he believes that he is intelligent, he quickly becomes lazy due to a failure of a class. Soon after, he enlists in the military to participate in World War I, in which he does little and the details of his time are muddled. After he returns, he falls in love with Rosalind Connage; however, as Amory does not have money, Rosalind refuses to marry him. Amory spirals into a binge of drinking and depression, after which he has a tryst with a woman named Eleanor. Discovering that his family fortunes have left him with little in terms of inheritance. He returns to Princeton, now believing somewhat in socialism, his future ahead of him.
The book’s main character, Amory, is by and large the conduit for Fitzgerald’s treatise on the difficulty for men to find their place in 20th century America. Amory’s indecisiveness and impetuousness are a symptom of his youth, and he is increasingly disillusioned by the systems society has set up to support him. "I'm restless. My whole generation is restless. I'm sick of a system where the richest man gets the most beautiful girl if he wants her, where the artist without an income has to sell his talents to a button manufacturer. Even if I had no talents I'd not be content to work ten years, condemned either to celibacy or a furtive indulgence, to give some man's son an automobile” (Fitzgerald 232). Being so rudderless, Amory flits about from cause to cause, woman to woman, ultimately realizing the selfishness of such an act.
Much of the book’s treatment of women lies in Fitzgerald’s depiction of Amory’s second love, Rosalind. While few other characters receive as much focus or attention in the novel as Amory, Rosalind most closely mirrors Fitzgerald’s real relationship with his love Zelda. Like Zelda, Rosalind is extremely preoccupied with marrying someone who is rich; to that end, Amory’s biggest goal or desire is to become rich. However, as he eventually fails, Rosalind marries someone else who is rich; she defines him as “ a good man and a strong one” (Fitzgerald 210). She knows fully well the effect she has on men, and hates how much she has to break their hearts; she tells her sister, “you don’t know what a trial it is to be like me” (Fitzgerald 188). Rosalind is less of a character than she is a symbol of the perfect woman that Fitzgerald’s characters always pine after; losing them makes his main characters lose their minds somewhat, making them incredibly ill at ease and without much of a sense of direction.
The aimlessness of Amory’s character helps to sell Fitzgerald’s ideas of his generation lacking direction in the early 20th century. All of this starts with his relationship with his mother, who was a decidedly unconventional figure. Beatrice was exceptionally well-bred and educated, a trait she passed on to her son through her own parenting: “All in all Beatrice O'Hara absorbed the sort of education that will be quite impossible ever again; a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about” (Fitzgerald 13). However, as the book reveals, it is perhaps this ‘impossible’ education that sets Amory up for failure; she was taught that she could accomplish anything, so she passed on those expectations to Amory – expectations that could not possibly be met. Because life turns out to not be as simple and easy as Beatrice tells him, this aimlessness is amplified.
Even romantic relationships are things to be treated as ephemeral and temporary; throughout the book Amory wanders from woman to woman, constantly looking for a measure of solace in his life only to be rejected or to reject in turn. His first love is Myra St. Claire, a young girl he meets as a teenager and who quickly establishes Amory’s skittishness and nervousness around women: “Sudden revulsion seized Amory, disgust, loathing for the whole incident. He desired frantically to be away, never to see Myra again, never to kiss any one; he became conscious of his face and hers, of their clinging hands, and he wanted to creep out of his body and hide somewhere safe out of sight, up in the corner of his mind” (Fitzgerald 22). This kind of anxiety about what he might bring to the relationship (and vice versa) follows Amory in all his relationships, from Isabelle to Rosalind and beyond. When Rosalind and Amory get together, someone quickly notes the unhappiness that will surely befall them: “She won’t marry him, but a girl doesn’t have to marry a man to break his heart” (Fitzgerald 199). This latter phrase sums up Amory’s constant disappointment and disillusionment with women.
War, often treated as romantic and purposeful by mankind over the course of its lifetime, is treated as mundane and unimpressive by Fitzgerald in the novel. Amory’s war experiences are summed up succinctly in the interlude between the two books of This Side of Paradise; through a pair of letters and a short narration, we hear of Amory’s assignment to Long Island, and his relative aimlessness in the war. He does not get much to do, which is a far cry from the romantic heroes of war and romance novels – he merely spends his time writing poems and being bored. In a poem written to his friend Darcy, he calls his time in the war “futile years,” noting just how useless they are (Fitzgerald 139).
Amory’s relationship with wealth and money is another direct parallel to the unhappiness and lack of fulfillment he feels in his life. In the beginning of the novel, Amory has the expectation of wealth – Beatrice’s wealthy upbringing creates that expectation, as does his enrollment in Princeton University. However, he does all manner of things to lose interest in the things that would make him rich, and other circumstances conspire to make him poor. This leads to Amory becoming a socialist - "if there were ten men insured against either wealth or starvation, and offered a green ribbon for five hours' work a day and a blue ribbon for ten hours' work a day, nine out of ten of them would be trying for the blue ribbon” (Fitzgerald 229).
This Side of Paradise’s chief theme is identity – all throughout the novel, Amory Blaine struggles to find himself and determine what his role should be in the world he lives in. The novel shows his childhood, giving us a glimpse into his development; all throughout, society places expectations on him. His wealthy mother Beatrice expects him to be a rich gentleman, as does Princeton and the women he chooses to be with. He attempts to conform as much as he can in Princeton, but he finds it incredibly empty, constantly veering from his established path in order to find himself. War and romance give him little solace, failing to find the happiness in those systems that other people seem to have found. Even money abandons him by the end, that basic societal expectation stripped from him. Given these stages of his development, Fitzgerald uses Amory’s troubles to examine how a person can live without being defined by those socially-accepted attributes. Eventually, he claims to know himself; the final line of the book being “I know myselfbut that is all” (Fitzgerald 236).
In conclusion, This Side of Paradise tells the story of one man’s attempt to discover himself in the wake of all of his established systems (money, women, institutions) failing him. Stemming from Fitzgerald’s desire to impress his true love Zelda, This Side of Paradise follows a protagonist who finds himself lost in the various identities society, family and women foist upon him. In exploring these various roles and finding them unfulfilling, Amory discovers that the American Dream of the early 20th century – one of wealth, prestige and romance – cannot bring him happiness. To that end, Fitzgerald’s novel emphasizes the importance of individuality and not defining oneself by the labels society places on you.
Works Cited
Bruccoli, Matthew Joseph (2002), Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott
Fitzgerald (2nd rev. ed.), Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press,2002.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise. Scribner, 1920. Print.
James, Pearl. "History and masculinity in F. Scott Fitzgerald's This side of paradise." MFS
Modern Fiction Studies 51.1 (2005): 1-33.
