The Failure of the 'American Dream' in the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Failure of the 'American Dream' in the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald PDF Author: Tobias Bumm
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3638866378
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 77

Book Description
Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Stuttgart, language: English, abstract: 1. Introduction [...] I rather want to take it up here again, since it is the melting pot of all of Fitzgerald's work as an author. After that I will proceed with his first successful novel 'This Side Of Paradise', a piece of work that made him an instant success in the U.S.A. in the 1920s and that got him a lot of critical acclaim all over the nation. [...] What these three novels have in common is that on their outset, the protagonists seem to have a great future ahead of them or at least think they do. It is not before a certain point of the books that the readers realize that the characters' version and vision of the American Dream or of their lives and what they think it should be like, has to fail in the end. How do they want to achieve wealth and a better status in society has to be explored and explained. Another point will be, how their strife is conducted and why it finally has to fail and why they cannot succeed in what they do and what kinds of obstacles society puts in their way. I will take a close look at the protagonists' zeals and at their struggle to achieve what they want and at their failure to do so. The examination will mostly take place from a literary standpoint. Since this is a thesis in American literature, I will focus on how the respective piece of literature is made and not so much on the historical context. The latter one will only be used to make certain passages of the respective novel clear and lucid. The main spot is focussed on F. Scott Fitzgerald's construction of the American Dream and its final failure in his works. In order to make my points clear, I will mostly use the method of Deconstruction, i.e., I will stay very closely to the respective text and interpret it. This method is very suitable for me to state my case on certain parts of the text to make clear in what way the prot

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby PDF Author: F Scott Fitzgerald
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 166

Book Description
Set in the 1920's Jazz Age on Long Island, The Great Gatsby chronicles narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. First published in 1925, the book has enthralled generations of readers and is considered one of the greatest American novels.

The Epic of America

The Epic of America PDF Author: James Truslow Adams
Publisher: Simon Publications
ISBN: 9781931541336
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
A beautifully written story of America's historical heritage, by one of the country's greatest historians.

Fitzgerald: My Lost City

Fitzgerald: My Lost City PDF Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521402392
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 378

Book Description
"This volume of the Cambridge Fitzgerald Edition includes the original nine stories selected by Fitzgerald for All the Sad Young Men, together with eleven additional stories, published between 1925 and 1928, which were not collected by Fitzgerald during his lifetime." "This edition of All the Sad Young Men is the first of the short-fiction collections in the Cambridge edition to be based on extensive surviving manuscripts and typescripts. The volume contains a scholarly introduction, historical notes, a textual apparatus, illustrations, and appendixes."--BOOK JACKET.

The Liberal Imagination

The Liberal Imagination PDF Author: Lionel Trilling
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590175514
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 339

Book Description
The Liberal Imagination is one of the most admired and influential works of criticism of the last century, a work that is not only a masterpiece of literary criticism but an important statement about politics and society. Published in 1950, one of the chillier moments of the Cold War, Trilling’s essays examine the promise —and limits—of liberalism, challenging the complacency of a naïve liberal belief in rationality, progress, and the panaceas of economics and other social sciences, and asserting in their stead the irreducible complexity of human motivation and the tragic inevitability of tragedy. Only the imagination, Trilling argues, can give us access and insight into these realms and only the imagination can ground a reflective and considered, rather than programmatic and dogmatic, liberalism. Writing with acute intelligence about classics like Huckleberry Finn and the novels of Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but also on such varied matters as the Kinsey Report and money in the American imagination, Trilling presents a model of the critic as both part of and apart from his society, a defender of the reflective life that, in our ever more rationalized world, seems ever more necessary—and ever more remote.

Careless People

Careless People PDF Author: Sarah Churchwell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698151631
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 431

Book Description
Kirkus (STARRED review) "Churchwell... has written an excellent book... she’s earned the right to play on [Fitzgerald's] court. Prodigious research and fierce affection illumine every remarkable page.” The autumn of 1922 found F. Scott Fitzgerald at the height of his fame, days from turning twenty-six years old, and returning to New York for the publication of his fourth book, Tales of the Jazz Age. A spokesman for America’s carefree younger generation, Fitzgerald found a home in the glamorous and reckless streets of New York. Here, in the final incredible months of 1922, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald drank and quarreled and partied amid financial scandals, literary milestones, car crashes, and celebrity disgraces. Yet the Fitzgeralds’ triumphant return to New York coincided with another event: the discovery of a brutal double murder in nearby New Jersey, a crime made all the more horrible by the farce of a police investigation—which failed to accomplish anything beyond generating enormous publicity for the newfound celebrity participants. Proclaimed the “crime of the decade” even as its proceedings dragged on for years, the Mills-Hall murder has been wholly forgotten today. But the enormous impact of this bizarre crime can still be felt in The Great Gatsby, a novel Fitzgerald began planning that autumn of 1922 and whose plot he ultimately set within that fateful year. Careless People is a unique literary investigation: a gripping double narrative that combines a forensic search for clues to an unsolved crime and a quest for the roots of America’s best loved novel. Overturning much of the received wisdom of the period, Careless People blends biography and history with lost newspaper accounts, letters, and newly discovered archival materials. With great wit and insight, acclaimed scholar of American literature Sarah Churchwell reconstructs the events of that pivotal autumn, revealing in the process new ways of thinking about Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. Interweaving the biographical story of the Fitzgeralds with the unfolding investigation into the murder of Hall and Mills, Careless People is a thrilling combination of literary history and murder mystery, a mesmerizing journey into the dark heart of Jazz Age America.

Echoes of the Jazz Age

Echoes of the Jazz Age PDF Author: F Scott Fitzgerald
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781672365505
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 34

Book Description
The word jazz in its progress toward respectability has meant first meal, then dancing, then music. It is associated with a state of nervous stimulation, not unlike that of big cities on the edge of a war zone.

The Great Gatsby: A Novel

The Great Gatsby: A Novel PDF Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal
ISBN: 0762498145
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
A beautifully illustrated version of the original 1925 edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic Great American novel. Widely considered to be the greatest American novel of all time, The Great Gatsby is the story of the wealthy, quixotic Jay Gatsby and his obsessive love for debutante Daisy Buchanan. It is also a cautionary tale of the American Dream in all its exuberance, decadence, hedonism, and passion. First published in 1925 by Charles Scribner's Sons, The Great Gatsby sold modestly and received mixed reviews from literary critics of the time. Upon his death in 1940, Fitzgerald believed the book to be a failure, but a year later, as the U.S. was in the grips of the Second World War, an initiative known as Council on Books in Wartime was created to distribute paperbacks to soldiers abroad. The Great Gatsby became one of the most popular books provided to regiments, with more than 100,000 copies shipped to soldiers overseas. By 1960, the book was selling apace and being incorporated into classrooms across the nation. Today, it has sold over 25 million copies worldwide in 42 languages. This exquisitely rendered edition of the original 1925 printing reintroduces readers to Fitzgerald's iconic portrait of the Jazz Age, complete with specially commissioned illustrations by Adam Simpson that reflect the gilded splendor of the Roaring Twenties.

Tender Is the Night and the Last Tycoon

Tender Is the Night and the Last Tycoon PDF Author: Francis Scott Fitzgerald
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781840226638
Category : Psychiatrists
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The last tycoon centers on the life of fictional film executive Monroe Stahr, circa Hollywood in the 1930s. Stahr is modeled loosely on the life of film executive Irving Thalberg.

Babylon Revisited

Babylon Revisited PDF Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Publisher: Modernista
ISBN: 9180947336
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 25

Book Description
»Babylon Revisited« is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, originally published in 1931. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD [1896-1940] was an American author, born in St. Paul, Minnesota. His legendary marriage to Zelda Montgomery, along with their acquaintances with notable figures such as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, and their lifestyle in 1920s Paris, has become iconic. A master of the short story genre, it is logical that his most famous novel is also his shortest: The Great Gatsby [1925].