Brief History of the Life and Works of Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald - Free Essay

Frances Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on September 24th, 1896, in Minnesota and passed away on December 21st, 1940. He was a novelist and short-story writer, mainly famous for his works The Great Gatsby, one of his most brilliant novels, and his depictions of the Jazz Age (Fitzgerald, 2010). Moreover, his private with his wife, Zelda, both in France and the United States, became celebrated as his works. He was the only son of an energetic and aristocratic father and provincial mother.

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Fitzgerald began reading different books and novels at an early age and started demonstrated at an early talent for writing. However, he was a lousy student and struggles to achieve better grades both at grade school and college (Wolski et al., 2017). Moreover, at Princeton University, Fitzgerald had a penchant for cutting classes and nearly failed before abandoning school and join the military (Ngô, 2014). Even though he had a legendary command of the written word, he was a poor speller, and most people argue that he may have had dyslexia. One of his classmates at college read one of his novels, This Side of Paradise, and he commented that it was one of the most illiterate books and had many English words misused.

Both at Newman School and St. Paul Academy, he tried and made himself unpopular, but at Princeton University, he was able to realize his dream. He met his lifelong friends John Peale Bishop and Edmund Wilson. He met his wife Zelda Sayre in July 1918 they immediately fell in love. One of the early works that made him popular with readers was This Side of Paradise. He went on to write for popular magazines such as Scribner and The Saturday Evening Pos (Ngô, 2014)t. Some of his other works include Tender Is the Night (1934) and All the Sad Young Men (1926) (Fitzgerald, 2010). He passed away at the age of 44 years while still writing the Novel The Last Tycoon. His cause of death was determined to be a heart attack.

Collaboration and Deception of the Jazz Age

During the 1920s, America experienced prosperity and improvements such as in technology, economic growth. It led to the invention of new lifestyles such as traveling, jazz, and sports. People from all walks of life came to America to witness the "American dream." The Great Gatsby represents the "American dream" era, which was deeply engaged in acts of corruption, moral emptiness hypocrisy, and the author showed how persons became extravagant by purchasing clothes, pieces of jewelry, glassware, and also one lived a lavish life. It is evidenced in the Great Gatsby story "Gatsby drove along, cream-colored car, a veritable circus wagon. He lived in a huge mansion where he arranged lavish, drunken parties to get the attention of the Egg and East Egg society" (Phillips & Kim, 2009). It shows how persons in that era wasted resources.

Jazz ancestry goes back in time where it got condemned, and the whites termed it as "Unspeakable Jazz must go" in the early 1930s because they viewed the black Americans as savages and also that one's music was retarded (Phillips & Kim, 2009). The whites also viewed jazz music as the "Devils music" since the immortal orchestration encouraged sex, drugs, and violence. Jazz music, after a while, gained popularity and was embraced by some of the white race (Ngô, 2014). The jazz brought about new culture and styles into New York.

Fitzgerald embraced the art of jazz as good music, but one rejected the racist critiques. The word jazz tends to not appear mostly in the works of Fitzgerald, such as Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald goes on and introduces music in the background, and that one refers to the use of saxophones, horns, and instruments. All the Fitzgerald features trend to feature orchestras playing on the backgrounds.

Fitzgerald refers to black men as "bucks" one tries to describe black men as animals that the white men can hunt. The writer tries to show the depth of racism in society and how Fitzgerald undermined black African American men (Chen & Zhou, 2019). The work of arts of Fitzgerald did not go unnoticed until one of the avid readers of Fitzgerald wrote one a letter claiming that Fitzgerald undermined the black race and referred to black men as bucks in one of his stories "three modish negroes, two bucks, and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyes rolled towards us in haughty rivalry" (Phillips & Kim, 2009).

Fitzgerald used racist imagery in his novels. Even on one's trip, Fitzgerald described a trip to Europe claiming that the "Negroid streak creep northward to defile the Nordic race," this statement tends to contain racial echoes that imply the white supremacy and dominance (Ngô, 2014).

One decided to embrace the new music. One was willing to learn, yet in this era, jazz was well known and embraced by the public, and that one could not view black people as the way one viewed the white race. It means that he still despised the black race (Fitzgerald, 2010).

Jazz set out to lure beauty, and it also attempted to dissolve the social line, race differences. Although Fitzgerald was flawed, one embraced the art of jazz since one chooses to become a dancer on the ground state and that the saxophones and pianos always attracted one (Ngô, 2014).

In the "Great Gatsby," the writer brings about the era of prohibition. During the 1920s, the alcohol consumption rate was high, and the government had to eliminate the manufacturers and distributors in order to curb this problem (Fitzgerald, 2010). There was also a rise in religious movements because the religious groups believed that the consumption of alcohol was harmful to one's health. It led to the banning of the sale of alcohol after the constitution got amended (Chen & Zhou, 2019). This effect was successful since the alcohol consumption rate reduced, and only the high class and middle-class persons could be able to purchase the alcohol, unlike the poor persons who could not buy it since the prices increased.

The prohibition harmed persons financially, emotionally, since the persons lost one's job and had to involve in criminal activities to cater to one's needs. It led to a rise in criminal activities and also violence (Chen & Zhou, 2019). The prohibition also led to damage to one's organs since the cheap and illegal since the alcohol smuggled through unsafe environments and that it was not purified.

In Fitzgerald's novel, "This side of paradise" got published in the year 1920. Fitzgerald tends to illustrate and draw one's romantic woes and also anxieties. The story is about Amory Blaine, a writer who tries to make a name for oneself in Princeton. The character tries so much to woo two women but becomes unsuccessful and later on forced to join the army. In the novel, "The Beautiful and damned," foreshadows how the author fears for one marriage in this work of art.

References

Chen, D., & Zhou, S. (2019). A probe into the dark side of human nature veiled in the American dream by analyzing "The Great Gatsby." Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences, and Ecological Studies (CESSES 2019). https://doi.org/10.2991/cesses-19.2019.127

Fitzgerald, F. S. (2010). Flappers and Philosophers: The Collected Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Penguin UK. http://public-library.uk/pdfs/2/817.pdf

Ngô, F. I. (2014). Imperial Blues: Geographies of Race and Sex in Jazz Age New York. Duke University Press. http://dl223.zlibcdn.com/dtoken/6a35f54303dfaaae31c0ce03d1701c61

Phillips, D. J., & Kim, Y. K. (2009). Why pseudonyms? Deception as identity preservation among jazz record companies, 1920–1929. Organization Science, 20(3), 481-499. doi10.1287/orsc.1080.0371

Wolski, M. M., Paola, L. D., & Teive, H. A. (2017). Scott Fitzgerald: Famous writer, alcoholism, and probable epilepsy. Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria, 75(1), 66-68. https://doi.org/10.1590/0004-282x20160167