What Is F Scott Fitzgerald's Influence On The Great Gatsby

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The life of F. Scott Fitzgerald had a great influence on his works. He incorporates the effects of societal and personal events into his writing. By observing his biography and analyzing his novels, The Beautiful and Damned and The Great Gatsby for example, the readers can see how the two are connected. Even though The Great Gatsby, one of his most famous works, isn’t an autobiographical one, it is a mirror of the personal life of its author, since different aspects of it are reflected in the characters of the novel. A large part of Fitzgerald’s life is his wife, Zelda Fitzgerald. Through the characterization and actions of Daisy Buchanan in the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald portrays his strained relationship with Zelda. The couple lived in New…show more content…
His life parallels the real-life biography of the book’s author and represents the way Fitzgerald sees himself. They were both raised in Minnesota in prosperous families. After that they were educated in Ivy League schools – Nick was in Yale, while Fitzgerald in Princeton. Then, after World War I, in which they both have fought, they ventured easy for opportunities in business and writing, respectively. In his biography The Far Side of Paradise by Arthur Mizener, the author writes how Fitzgerald’s father taught him the code of the Southern gentleman, good manners and right instincts. He also adds that “[Fitzgerald] always saw what others were feeling and sympathized with them, especially if he himself had imposed on them…” (Mizener xix) This can be connected to the way Nick opens his narration by sharing the advice his father gave him: Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone…just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had” (Fitzgerald…show more content…
The most direct parallel between the lives of the two can be found in the unrequited pursuit of love. Fitzgerald meets Zelda at a country club dance when she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. In the novel, Gatsby meets Daisy for the first time in Louisville where he was stationed at Camp Taylor as a young officer. Similarly to Daisy in "The Great Gatsby," Zelda was wealthy and far above Fitzgerald's status. Both women had a sense of privilege, innate superiority and a seductive manner. Therefore, Gatsby and Fitzgerald were equally romantics who embarked on love affairs during military service. Also, they both hosted wild parties, in order to impress the women they loved. Another similarity is that they made new money early in life. The desperate need to accumulate a fortune to win the affections of a woman made both Gatsby and Fitzgerald frantic for success. The lives of the two also ended in tragic deaths. About Scott, Miezner writes that “[Fitzgerald] saw his own rise from poverty to affluence as an illustration of the terrible, meaningless power of money” (Mizener 103). When Fitzgerald’s career as a writer began to flourish, he began showing off his money in tasteless ways. After battling with bad press, alcohol addiction and fading health, he died of a heart attack in Hollywood. Mizener reports that he
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