A Closer Look At F.scott Fitzgerald

CHAPTER 2 A closer look at F.Scott Fitzgerald

His early life began with his birth in 1896 in St.Paul,Minnesota.His namesake came from the composer of the” Star-Spangled Banner”, Francis Scott Key. As I took a look to Fitzgerald family background I found out that Francis was the only son of Edward Fitzgerald, a man that came from the Old South within its vallues and Mary McQuillan, the daughter of an Irish Immigrant with good finances. We will see during my thesis that financial issues tend to follow not only Edward’s life but also his son’s. As in day-to-day life happens, the fact that Edward had a more humble financial status, made his wife’s family to feel superior over him .As Kirk Curnutt spoke in his literary work “The Cambridge Introduction to Francis Scott Fitzgerald” McQuillan family made a million dollar wholesale grocery business from a modest store. We will see that after a series of failures and breaking-downs this asset will provide to Edward the main source of living.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald was the third son of the marriage between Mary and Edward,but the first surviving child, beeing his parents’ pride and joy.The former two children, Mary and Louise had died three months before Francis was born event followed by another child loss in 1900 .Later on,in one of his novel Scott decribes that event as being the moment when he became a writer „Well,three months after I was born,my mother lost two children..I think I started then to be a writer”(Fitzgerald, p184).He became emotionally vulnerable because of his spoilling mother atitudine that made him aware of some qualities that an author has to have in order to be able to put texts and stories on paper,such as sensibility,vulnerability and emotion.. Throughout childhood Mollie Fitzgerald forgave her beautiful baby boy all misbehavior. No matter what Scott did, he was just her "bad brownie." So thoroughly did his mother spoil him that, as he later commented, until he was fifteen he "did not know anyone else was alive. Personally I think this spoiling mother atitude in which Scott is being pampered and beloved is well centered in one of Fitzgerald’s novels This Side Of Paradise where we read about Beatrice Blaine deeply love and her excessive spoiling atitudine towards her son,Amory. This auto-biographical hint allows us to see how Fitzgerald used his own life as a source of inspiration in writing his works.

The story of his father, Edward had a major influence on Francis’s life and work, not in the way a fatherlike figure should influence his son by being a symbol of inspiration and admiration. He served him more as a symbol of failure due to his collapses. The financial issue becomes more proemiment due to Edward’s unnsuccessful furniture business who went under and made them sink so deeper that they had to move immediately to Buffalo,New Work in 1898 where Edward started to work for a while for Procter and Gamble becoming a salesman, work that didn’t last longer, fact that was the turning point of his true breaking down.,becoming a ”completely broken man who was a failure for the rest of his days”(Andrew Hook, 4). This made little Francis to think that he will never be a failure like his father, so that’s why I would say that in a way Edward did influence Francis although not in a positive way. Again after this collapse,in 1901 the year when Annabelle is born,the Fitzgeralds had to move again to Syracuse,New York. They kept on having an unsettled home, mostly because of Edward’s uninterrupted failures . Two years later, in 1903 they moved back home in Buffalo,place where they have stayed untill 1908, when Edward was again dismissed, fact that pushed them to move to St.Paul where Francis attends St.Paul Academy.

We saw Edward’s struggles and failures had an important influence on Francis who had as many as the americans born at the turn of centuries hopes and aspirations. This kind of instability as much as financial was also phycological. All these unsettled homes and the fact that they always had to move because they couldn’t afford to stay at one place for long time due to Edward dismissions marked Francis personality by turning him into an hesitant man. When we will be discussing about later life of Francis, I will dare to say that these kind of instability made him be prone to lots of the problems that he will facein the future .But to remain focus at the childhood, by seeing his father’s collapses he only managed to wish more to become rich and famous, and to be admired all over the world. That was a big goal for a little Irish Catholic boy,until he had discovered his empathy towards writing that as we will see later on, would open so many doors for the young Francis towards society.

In 1908 after Edward loses his job in Buffalo,the Fitzgeralds will return back home to St.Paul where Francis will enroll the St.Paul Academy.He had always feel like an outsider due to his lack of money and his family background who did not guarantee him a status in the academic environment so he had to relly on his own powers and sources. That is the moment when little Francis began to grow up and to became conscious of his gift of writing.

In 1909, at St.Paul Academy he writes “The Misery of the Raymond Mortgage”, work that get published in the same year in the St.Paul Academy Now and Then magazine. This is the first published work of Francis Scott Fitzgerald and may had been the key that marked his beginning as a writer, and the way he had discovered that he has a special gift that will help him stand out .So that’s what he does. He writes poems and articles and he becomes aware of his gift and he begins to take advantage of it, because he sees that the lines and the script he writes for the play are being followed by everybody. So that gives him a satisfying power and he begins to feel accomplished. Francis S. is being seen by the others towards his own writings, he is gaining respect and he’s being accepted into society and that makes one part of his dreams come true. The other dream that he has, to be rich, and not to be a failure is going to happen sooner or later. In other words, this is the moment when his early success begins to show up.

Next event in Francis Scott’s life is the enrollment to Newman School in Hackensack in 1911 where he continues to write plays and articles and to build his dream as a writer. His works are published in Newman School News again and the fact that every work that he writes is being recognized by the public makes him even more aware of capacity of writing and that he has to be known for it.

But what really crushed him and makes him for the first time aware of the consequences of his own actions was the fact that he had lost the privilege of weekend trips due to his poor grades. Fitzgerald manages though to stand himself on his feet again,by writing plays the next year at Newman, by struggling to became less selfish and thinking more at the others that he used to. He gains a position as editor of the Newman News,winning a part in a school play and later on he is being awarded a prize for is performance in various elocution contests.

Between those two years spent at Newman School, Scott meets a fatherlike figure that would give birth to one of his characters in his first novel, This Side of Paradise and that would be Father Sigourney Fay, a Newman trustee. The two began to grew a close friendship, due to Father’s Fay ability to communicate with young people. Harold Bloom says in his work about Fitzgerald that the bond between these two men was intensified/strenghtened by Scott’s need of a fatherlike figure. When Father Fay dies in 1919, Scott wrotes to a friend “I can’t realize that he has gone. That all of us who loved him have lost him forever and that that side of life is over, the great warmth and atmosphere that he could cast over youth—the perfect understanding.”(Harold Blomm, p11).

Scott has been admiring Princeton where he saw many advantages that convinced him to considered it a possible college choice, such as the theatrical group called the Triangle Club,( for which he writes the lyrics of two good productions: Fie!Fie! Fi-Fi! and The Evil Eye) him being attracted to writing ,to theatre, and to literature. He failed the entrance exam first time and second time in the fall too. So, he used his usual charm to speak to the officials, eventually convincing the that he would be suitable as a student at Princeton.

So in 1913 he enters to Princeton University with the intention to make himself remarkable, and he tries to join the football team but his physical features didn’t help him so he quickly returns to what he knew best: writing. At Princeton writes all kind of plays and articles, that were published here too and gave him an opportunity to stand out. The fact that he could write and he made friends due to his gift made him have a wonderful time at Princeton. He goes to parties and he becomes known.

After his rise at Princeton he goes through a fall. He withdraws from Princeton because he is failing too many classes due to his attention to other activities. Because he didn’t graduate Princeton he doesn’t feel accomplished and his life begins to be problematic.He goes through a romantic disappointment after a love story with a wealthy girl,disappointment that happened due to their different social and financial status. So Fitzgerald sufferes again from his lack of money and status, as he has been suffering from his early childhood. Jumping in 1933,Fitzgerald writes to John O’Hara( his novelist friend) about how he suffered because of his social background, and he describes in an autobiographical essay his failures and disappointments at Princeton “I am half black Irish and half old American stock with the usual exaggerated ancestral pretensions. The black Irish half of the family had the money and looked upon the Maryland side of the family who had, and really had, that certain series of reticences and obligations that go under the poor old shattered word “breeding”…”(L,522).

In his journey towards becoming a writer,Scott had the help of John Peale Bishop,a friend that helped Scott understand poetry and who encouraged him but also criticized him.He helped also at building the character of Thomas Parke D’Invilliers in Fitzgerald first novel,This Side of Paradise. In Andrew’sTurnbull biography about Fitzgerald Bishop tells us his version about their meeting:”We talked about books:Those I read,which were not many,those Fitzgerald had read,which were even less;those he said he had read,which were many,many more”.

Another friend that held his hand while becoming a writer was Edmund “Bunny”Wilson who was seriously surprised by Fitzgerald’s lack of learning, by his poor grammar but was even more surprised of his undoubtedly gift or talent .He says that Scott”has been given imagination without intellectual control of it… the desire for beauty without an aesthetic ideal…a gift for expression without many ideas to express”.He shows himself really surprised that despite of Scott’s lack of learning he could write poems so easily just by being gifted with such an ability to write.My guess is that little Scott saw writing as a way of hiding his social inferiority, his lack of money and his other shortcomings.

The time spent at Princeton served him as source of inspiration for his first novel in which he used his poems, plays and stories to build something bigger. Francis himself labeled the 19th year as “a year of terrible disappointment and the end of all college dreams" ( Mary Jo Tate, 2007 : 4) ). More than becoming a poet, my guess is that he wanted to gain acceptance of the others. Here at Princeton too, he felt like an outsider because he was neither wealthy neither eastern.He could not fit into the crowd. As Harold Bloom describes in his work about Fitzgerald, he knew then, when he was studying at Princeton that these years spent there would mean a rise or a fall. He would either meet his early success,or he would remain an outsider. So he dresses according to Princeton dress code, he tries again to be among the crowd.

Because he getting through a romantic disappointment with his first serious love that had a major influence on many females characters in his writings and was academically challenged F. Scott begins to discover himself as a true writer, embracing the idea of becoming a poet, a kind of an American Rupert Brooke who would already publish a book of poems before he was 21.Scott himself wrote in An Afternoon of An Author “I had only a year,and besides,war was impending .I must publish a book of startling verse before I was engulfed”(F.Scott Fitzgerald p4).

Before he had left Princeton, he wanted to show Fay the first draft of his novel. Since Fay was in Europe ,his friend Shane Leslie took care of editorial duties, correcting its grammar, its spelling errors before showing the draft to the publisher, The book was rejected due to its unruly form and inconclusive ending. Later on ,Charles Scribner said ”though Fitzgerald is still alive, it has a literary value. Of course when he is killed it will also have a commercial value”(Shepard,p35). His work was published and Scribner continued to buy Fitzgerald’s stories.

Francis knew the road of early success through his early writings. His published works at different magazines ,his first draft of his novel, his position as editor of the Newman News, his plays that had been played by different pupils on campus, his prize for his performance in various elocution contests, and all kind of appreciation of his early works.

Next event in Francis life is his enrolling in U.S.A Army. He has waited a month to enlist, despite his Princeton colleagues that had already enlisted. Francis was influenced in taking this decision by the poetries of Rupert Brooke, poetries about the author’s feelings of solidarity about dying young on battlefields. This kind of poetry woke up Fitzgerald’s patriotism, and I think he also saw this opportunity of fighting in war , as a gift giving the fact that he hadn’t graduated from Princeton. A gift , or a chance to step in, to prove his virtues. His imagination took him to the point he saw himself dying on the battlefield. So, he writes in a letter to his mother to ”pray for my soul and not that I won’t be killed-the last doesn’t seem to matter particularly and if you are a good Catholic the first ought t. To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing. I have never been more cheerful.”( Life in Letters, p13-14). Fitzgerald was eager to fight, to became a war hero although he was a romantic one. We will see during my thesis how Fitzgerald uses his war experiences in his own personal way.

Although he was eager to fight on the battlefield, he never saw combat during war, but later on he has made his own characters see it. Fitzgerald’s experience in war helped building Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby, these two characters being influenced by war and by its consequences. During war ,Fitzgerald was never sent overseas. He was in fact, waiting for that to happen as he was a lieutenant in the U.S.A Army, in 1918 in the Armistice Day.Together with the war, the chance of Fitzgerald to gain heroic glory on battlefield ended as well. That’s when another failure was added among others in our writer’s life. He had lost another chance to became known, he had lived another experience from which he couldn’t benefit. The fact that he didn’t participated physical at war unlike Ernest Hemingway who was considered a war writer ,made Fitzgerald feel unfulfilled. But as always he managed to get out the best of the worst and he used his war experience in the way he knew better: in writing. That gave him even more value ,together with the understanding of the culturally losses of the given generation because of the war. Francis wrote about war history, of how it had influenced his generation, making his contemporary readers aware of the fact that even if he didn’t hold battles, he was aware of the hardness of the battlefield. Furthermore, although he becomes a writer of romances, full of sensibility, he writes with eagerness about the social impact of the war, making his short stories realistic, true mirrors of that time reality.

The effects that the World War I had on Fitzgerald’s life and personality are visible in his novel Tender is the Night, a novel about the consequences of the war(war, battle, and violence are also themes of Dick's ,the main character personal decline.).We gathered one more evidence of the impact that the war had on Fitzgerald’s mind and creativity but also about his autobiographical style of writing.

The Jazz Age……………………………………………………………………………..

When we talk about a key part in the life of Fitzgerald we are talking about the moment he met Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court Associate Justice, fact that gave her high social status. Is has been written that it was love at first side Scott being captivated by Zelda although she had many suitors at that time. From the moment he meets her, he goes frequently to Montgomery. He was a poor man, again with many of his writings unpublished, he doesn’t win the approval of Zelda’s parents when he goes to ask for it. That fact makes him more ambitious of getting rich so he could marry the woman of his dreams. Not later , his novel This Side of Paradise is accepted by Scribner and Zelda accepts his proposal to marriage .A week before the wedding, Scott’s novel is being published and Zelda’s painting commemorates their wedding on April 1920. They become celebrities overnight, the most spoken people of that period. Their own glee, their own madness and reckless behavior kept drawing the attention of the magazines from New York. They were the emblem of Jazz Age ,representing vitality and wildness of their behavior and love. They keep this status during time because their marriage faces as we are about to see many other challenges.

This couple was as I said the icon of the Jazz Age period. Their love story was fixed in the minds of mass-media due to the fact that they were always preoccupied with their public apeareance.

When we talk about Scott and Zelda we invoke the Jazz Age ,a period of cultural flowering, of wild economic prosperity. Money plays its roles during this period, as much as it plays a role in the marriage of the Fitzgeralds and as much as has been playing all Scott’s life. Fitzgerald himself labels the down of the Jazz Age(a term he invented) as “the greatest, gaudiest spree in history”(Scott, My Lost City, 1935).

The first sign of this couple struggle appears when Fitzgerald’s second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned, gets published and Zelda reviews the book claiming parts of t were poached from her diaries. After this novel publication Scott and Zelda begun to spend his earnings like millionaires, spending more than Scott was gaining. They become reckless with their resources and they party way above normal standars The publication of this novel not only that offered them financial status but introduced them into a upper social class where they become familiar with higher names like Picasso and Hemingway. This is the moment when Zelda gets ambitious and wishes to have her own artistic identity.

After the only child of Fitzgerald’s couple, Scottie is born, they spend their lives in hotels or rentals never owning a home. I think that was partly because of their own reckless behavior and because Scott kept having unsettled homes even when he was little and the idea that he doesn’t belong to any shelter got into his head. Or maybe because they both were so eager to build public personalities that they felt the need to be always on the move, so the mass-media and the public has to watch their every move. The story of this well-known couple that enchanted everyone at their first beginning, was going to disappoint the audience later on.

Scott was an early drinker who become an alcoholic. During time he was isolated as a writer as much as a husband.