Trapped And Bewildered: Dreams, Fantasies And Myths Of Love, Money And Sexuality In The Great Gatsby Of Scott. Fitzgerald.

Abstract

The main purpose of this research paper is to give a fresh interpretation of the mind and sensibility of the war heroes of the “Roaring Twenties” and the impact of the socio-political changes of the new age on Scott. Fitzgerald. He was the child of Jazz age the way William Wordsworth was the product of French Revolution. Wordsworth took up the ideals of French Revolution and Fitzgerald depicted the spirit of the 1920’s in his short stories and novels. His personal life was full of challenges and contradictions that characterized the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald’s s marriage to Zelda Sayre proved a turning point in his life as he used her as a model for his women protagonists. Their marriage collapsed like the collapse of the American economy on Black Tuesday of 1929. In his life Fitzgerald was always fear ridden of poverty and failure. Fitzgerald wrote on the themes of moral decline of his American youth; on theme of human degradation and loss of faith in God. The emergence of existentialism; nihilism, and pervasive vogue of spiritual void deeply impacted the mid and sensibility of Fitzgerald.  He was raised as a Catholic and he felt guilty since he wrote about the hedonistic pleasures enjoyed by the people after the World War. His father Edward Fitzgerald built no wholesale hardware business but went bankrupt in 1880’s; worked as a salesman and died in penury giving no crutches to Fitzgerald. He broke with Catholicism and began his journey of life as a writer with disillusionment and despair. He wrote about the plight of the American people and the decline of the American Dream. Fitzgerald “has come to be associated with the concept of the American dream more so than any other writer of the twentieth century.” (Pearson 638)